World Series dream reached by Bloomsburg University graduate

The World Series is a lifetime dream for any baseball player who makes it to the majors. It also is the dream of any sportswriter to cover Major League Baseball’s Fall Classic.

When the Philadelphia Phillies recently made an unexpected run to the World Series, Tim Kelly, a 2018 media and journalism graduate of Bloomsburg University, had a front-row seat covering the Fightin’ Phils.

“I've known since middle school that I wanted to work in sports media, and I really haven't looked back,” Kelly said. “By my second year at Bloomsburg, I knew that I wanted to cover either the Phillies or the Eagles. But baseball has always been my number one love, and I'm so thankful I've been given an opportunity to live out my dream.”

So how did a Bloomsburg graduate get to live out that dream and cover the World Series? A little luck and lots of hard work.

In July 2018, only two months following his graduation from Bloomsburg that May, Kelly landed a job with Phillies Nation, a blog and website dedicated to sharing ideas and information about the Phillies and their fans.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” Kelly said. ‘I reached out to Brian Michael, the founder and owner of Phillies Nation, on taking a major role for Phillies Nation as I looked to move to a larger site to write about the team. The Editorial Director that preceded me happened to be on his way out around that time, so it worked pretty well that I came in as he exited.”

Kelly credits professor John-Erik Koslosky and Dr. Maria Mendoza-Enright as his biggest influences during his time at Bloomsburg. “They pushed me in the right direction,” he said, adding that they helped him to simulate real-world scenarios.

 “John-Erik Koslosky's journalism workshop class, which changed themes every year, was so good that I took it twice,” Kelly said. “The first semester I took it, we interviewed prospective voters at the Bloomsburg Fair. Both Koslosky and Dr. Mendoza helped organize the 2018 Media Summit at Bloomsburg. They gave me a chance to host multiple panels, which helped me sharpen my live event coverage." 

One of the things Kelly noticed during his time covering the series was the large number of reporters in attendance.

“Even in a big market like Philly, there are games during the regular season where there are only five to 10 media members covering the game in person,” Kelly said. “That's just the nature of a 162-game season. But during a deep playoff run — and specifically in the World Series — there are dozens of media members present, and easily over 100 for the World Series. You really understand how big of a stage it is when you see those numbers.”

Kelly said the most exciting part of his World Series experience was being at the epicenter of the sport for a few weeks.

“When you cover an entire baseball season, you're at a lot of games that the majority of people don't really care about,” Kelly said. “But, during a postseason run, there's a ton of additional attention both locally and nationally. To be able to be one of the people bringing the news to excited fans was a dream come true.” 

Kelly did offer some advice to any current students interested in a writing career.

"Don't wait until you are a senior in college to start making connections,” he said. ‘By the time I graduated from Bloomsburg, I had written over 1,000 articles about Philadelphia sports online and made quite a few connections. Make a professional Twitter account and figure out ways to get people to follow you and want to look at your page every day.”