Nats’ analyst Phil Wood tells how baseball reporting has changed, including no more free booze in press box

Washington Nationals baseball analyst Phil Wood does not have a Twitter account. Growing up in Northern Virginia, he did have a transistor radio. That radio and trips to Griffith Stadium to watch the old Washington Senators (also nicknamed the Nats) ignited his lifelong love of baseball in the '60s.

That love led to a long career in baseball broadcasting and a perspective on how baseball reporting has changed over the decades -- a perspective he shared with a National Press Club audience July 20 at one of the Club’s “Get it Online” luncheon discussions.

When he began his career as a young reporter covering the Baltimore Orioles, only 30 games or so were on TV during a season, noted Wood, who now covers the Nationals on both radio and television.
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He recalled that with an open bar and buffet available in the press box in his early days, beat reporters were often "hammered" before the end of the game. Competitors covered for each other by filing copy to the opposition newspaper on the behalf of the inebriated. (Today's press box meals are not free and there is no bar.)

As for today’s in-game Twitter and blog posts, Wood said that "most of it is based on rumor ... A lot of it is just noise."

Comparing his early press box days in Baltimore to today's press boxes, Wood said that today young baseball writers hang out with each other. In Baltimore, he said, he felt privileged to hang around seasoned writers from the local papers and pick their brains. "Hanging out with guys like that, you learn how they do their job."

Today Wood hosts “Nationals Talk Live,” a post-game call-in show on the Nationals’ radio network, appears regularly on MASN's “Mid Atlantic Sports Report” and co-hosts MASN’s “Nats Talk” on Saturday mornings. In contrast to when he began his career in Baltimore, he now has a front row seat in the press box at Nationals Park and his own broadcast studio on the concourse above the left field seats.

Introducing Wood, event organizer Joan Coyle said that he is to baseball what historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin is to presidents.

After graduating college in 1972, he realized his degrees didn't really qualify him for a job, Wood said. So, asking himself "what would be fun to do," he decided that a journalism job would fill the bill. After sending resumes "to every newspaper and broadcast station in Washington," he said, he got one nibble from WTOP, which called him back six days after an initial interview and offered a job that quickly led him to the Orioles’ press box..

"I like to spend time with people who have insights," Wood told the National Press Club audience That's why he spends so much of his ballpark day with scouts from other teams, he said. He called them “pros” who pick up on little things about the players they are watching.

Other observations from Wood:

• Major League Baseball has the technology ready for computerized calling of ball and strikes.


• The Nationals’ owners genuinely have a "formula for long-term success."


• The team has sufficient talent in the minor leagues it could and would trade for "a difference maker" by the Aug. 1 deadline.


• Washington "is a great baseball town."


• If the World Series comes to Washington this year, the games will be on Oct 30 and 31 and if necessary Nov. 1.

And, said Wood: "Covering baseball is a great joy."

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