Guardrails down: let’s return to old-school raw-riffing about the Texas Rangers.

It’s time (again) to write about the Rangers the way I want to — and the way you want me to.

It’s been, for me, an entirely unprecedented Rangers offseason.  First, for the obvious reason.  There have been a couple baseball winters just as short, of course, but neither of those followed Texas winning the final game played.  I trust I don’t need to elaborate on how cool it’s been to wake up more than a few times with a mental re-realization that our team is the reigning World Series champion.

But it’s also the first offseason in which I’ve been a free agent.  I’ve been writing about the team for 26 years, but never before this had a platform been taken away from me.  I’d minimized that risk for the first 20 years by writing for myself, whether through an email newsletter or a website or a book.  That changed shortly before the 2018 baseball season, when The Athletic hung a shingle in DFW and asked Bob Sturm to assemble a team of writers to cover the local sports scene, which in turn led Bob to invite me aboard to team up with Levi Weaver on Rangers coverage.

A few things made that opportunity different from others I’d had in the past to fold the Newberg Report into something much bigger.  I was already a big fan of (and subscriber to) the site, whose baseball coverage was headed up by heroes Peter Gammons and Ken Rosenthal.  Plus, two decades into mixing my writing with other things I do, the idea of a new challenge, not to mention The Athletic’s reach, was rejuvenating and enticing.  Add the fact that Bob, another hero and someone whose writing style and sports-worldview has always resonated with me, was willing to recommend my unconventional (and part-time) approach when his own credibility was on the line — and that he’d be my teammate — and I decided I was ready, for the first time, to write for someone else.  Many of you followed me over there, and I am grateful for that.

The ability to write in that space lasted just under six years and just over 300 articles.  After writing a story about Josh Sborz — my favorite type, one that overlays present with past — that ran on December 27, I asked if there was a 2024 freelancer contract for me to look over.  No, I was told.  There was not.  Nothing personal, they said.  Not a reflection of my work, they added.  Just a business decision.  Understood.

One day, I was rolling out a story about a pinnacle. Two days later, I was told that was the end.

Fortunately, I still had — and still have — a place to write about baseball.  The good folks at D Magazine, led by Mike Piellucci (my former Athletic editor) and Tim Rogers, had carved out a second space for me to write in 2021 when my assignments at The Athletic were becoming more sparse and less predictable.  Writing for D made me better at this, I think.  It also — along with a World Series title — led to a book that I’m proud of.  I’m bearing in on 100 D Magazine stories and am thankful that I get to keep writing stories there.

But there’s a void now with the loss of the Athletic gig, partly because I want to write more often than D’s structure allows for — but also because of the things I want to write.  There are super-deep dives I want to do on subjects that are probably too nichey or minutiae-driven for D to want them, plus ridiculous, quarter-baked stupidities from the old Newberg Report days that I wouldn’t hate bringing back from time to time — ideas that were never fits at The Athletic and unquestionably aren’t at D Magazine, either.  Phone calls between JD and Ruben Amaro Jr. (or today’s equivalent), I’m looking at you.  Been a while, one-sentence, 1160-word reports titled “Kozmatology.”  One-word reports, perhaps we’ll meet again.

Do I understand why The Athletic cut me loose?  Truthfully, more so than I understood them not assigning a beat writer to cover the Rangers in 2023 — of all years — not to mention moving on from Bob, an elite Cowboys-content machine, exactly 200 days earlier than they told me I was done.  When that happened to him in June, I assumed my own days were numbered. 

Which brings me to what Bob did, and what I’ve decided to do.  He brought his sports brain and his keyboard to Substack, and I do believe he’s loving it here — and I’m loving what he’s doing with the freedom he now has.  He’s writing about far more than the Cowboys at SturmStack, with his unique combination of encyclopedic knowledge, next-level insights, and an obvious passion for sports.  That last part strikes a nerve for me as a reader.  So when he recommended the platform to me as a potential new address, it immediately entered the mix.  If I want to tell the backstory of a fascinating minor-league instructor whose name you don’t know, I can do that here.  If I want to bring TROT COFFEY back, I can bring TROT COFFEY back.  If I want to throw 3,000 words against the wall on something that last night’s game or the latest trade rumor has me thinking about, game on.

You know how much I love the build when it comes to writing about the Rangers: how we got here, where we stand, where we go from here.  That won’t change — but now there’s a whole new (and awesome) prism for us to look through, and I can’t wait to dive into the challenges now facing a world champion and the concept of how the Rangers are facing up to those.

Bob celebrated the chance to write about more subjects when he planted his flag here.  For me, it’s more about staying on message but expressing it in different ways.  Including some I’d left behind in 2018 that, as made clear to me by many of you over email or at recent book events, have been missed.  (Yes, in many cases, by me, too.)  I’ve done the solo thing before.  I did it for a couple decades.

So that part of the decision was easy: to supplement the space I’m lucky to have at D Magazine, I am going to once again write for myself.  (Not that there are many alternatives these days.)  

The next question: Go back to the old, well-worn path of my email newsletter, or set up shop at one of the online platforms like Substack, Medium, Patreon, or Beehiiv and charge for content?  Two things, the way I see it.  First, is it wrong to ask people to subscribe?  In today’s landscape, I think it’s fair (though spelling this out might reveal to you that there has been a tinge of guilt I’ve had to set aside).  I wrote my stories via email for 20 years without charging to read.  Given the choice, I’d rather not devote all those hours for free. 

Second, you can all read my work at D without paying for it.  The rest of my content the last six years was subscription-based at The Athletic, so it’s not as if charging for my second platform would be a major sea change.

It might even drive more of you to read my paywall-less content at the D site, if spending on baseball writing didn’t draw you to The Athletic and isn’t going to draw you here.  I get it!  Others of you might already be paying for the work of a Rangers beat writer or two and don’t want to add another subscription.  Keep doing that!  I pay for that, too; my work isn’t meant to replace what they provide, and as a Rangers fan I depend on the sort of coverage only they can deliver. There’s obviously some overlap in the Venn diagram, but there is subject matter that I take on that the beats aren’t interested in (or don’t have the time or space for), and there’s a much larger segment of what they cover that I can’t, particularly since they are around the team on a daily basis.

I’d like very much for you to consider consuming both, especially since our work will rarely if ever be duplicative.  If you feel you must choose just one and opt for them instead of me, zero hard feelings. But I do hope you’ll make this Newberg Report reboot a part of your Rangers routine. 

Writing about the Rangers isn’t a full-time endeavor for me, but my passion for the sport and the team is.  If I didn’t get to write as a fan for the fan (and thank you to both D Magazine and The Athletic for unconventionally allowing me to do that), I wouldn’t write.  I’d just read, and watch.

If I can convey my love of Rangers baseball the way Bob’s love of sports permeates everything he puts into words, I’ll have met my goal.  I hope you will follow me here and hold me to that, to trust that you’re going to get a focused, Rangers-from-all-angles approach — past, present, future, sometimes the big picture, other times zoomed in and laser-focused — that has driven me for 26 years, through the lens of an emotional, dedicated fan who views the work as “sharing” more than “reporting.”  You know how I’m wired, and that won’t change. 

If you think this might be for you, whether you’re heading over here as part of the Newberg Report community or a new arrival, by subscribing you will get access to all of my stories, including an archive that won’t go away. (I might post free ones on occasion, but not regularly.) You’ll be able to engage in the Comments section of each story — and I will interact with you there — and you’ll have the ability to ask questions for regularly scheduled mailbags and to participate in gameday chats that I’m expecting to set up from time to time.

There are monthly and annual rates — and not only does the annual rate save you a dollar per month, I decided to set it at a very Newberg Report-centric number.

Substack also offers a Founding Member option, and I’d of course be thrilled if you wanted in on that action. I’ll make it worthwhile, at the very least setting up online get-togethers a few times a year for us to interact.

If you subscribe, you can also count on getting some of the irreverence that seeped into two decades of the Newberg Report — but this time around you’ll also get a better writer, thanks to the rock-star editors I’ve had the last six years. 

Player-move observations and armchair GM’ing?  Yep.  Prospect rankings?  Of course.  Frequent mailbag exchanges?  Count on it.  Gamenight chats?  Just might.  Offseasons that are as content-packed as 162+’s?  For sure.

Occasional tangents?  Good chance.  Interactions?  More than ever.  Spitballed trade ideas?  All.  The.  Time.

Collaborations with Bob Sturm?  We are chewing on that, too.

There will be Oxford commas (always), two spaces after a period (every time), and run-on sentences (infrequently, but on purpose).  Informative will always be the goal, but we’re going to have some fun in the process.  I’ll spend some time over spring training looking back at old Newberg Reports to see what else I might want to bring back.  Probably not Rally Minka.  Probably.

Just as likely is the introduction of some new feature that I haven’t even thought of yet — but that one of you will suggest at some point.  (Maybe a trade retrospective here and there, for instance.)  There are thousands of you who have helped shape what the Newberg Report evolved into and pushed me to widen the wheelhouse.  That, I hope, will continue.  I don’t take it lightly that I’m asking for a commitment here.  That’s a two-way street.

I’d very much like for you to subscribe to this revitalized version of the old Newberg Report.  Tens of thousands of you have been with me since well before the Rangers had won a single playoff series, and we’ve grown up in this thing together.  We’ve got plenty of room here to grow some more.

One thing ends.  Another restarts.

There was a lot, when it comes to the baseball wing of my life, that I didn’t expect in 2023.  Including having to think about writing something like this.  The Rangers scaled the mountain.  I got pink-slipped. 

But that’s OK, and maybe a good thing.  I can’t wait to start riffing here about the defending world champs and their effort to become the first to repeat in two dozen years.  A whole new set of challenges awaits.  We’ve experienced that deep breath, that long-awaited peace that a Rangers World Series win has given us.  You with me in wanting to see if they can run it back, something no team has done in a generation? 

Let’s go.

Which is not to be confused with “let go,” the fate I experienced as a writer a month and a half ago.  Maybe I’ll just view getting gut-punched by The Athletic as my version of the Rangers’ unnerving season-ending series in Seattle.  Let’s see what happens next.  I hope you’ll be with me on that front, too, so we can find out together.

Pitchers and catchers get rolling today.  So do I.