Batter Up: Life coming Full Circle with MassLive’s Red Sox Beat Writer, Chris Cotillo
Chris Cotillo is currently a Boston Red Sox insider and beat reporter for MassLive. He covers the Red Sox daily which can consist of covering the games during the season, reporting roster moves during the off-season, or breaking the latest news revolving around the team. I got connected with Cotillo through a mutual friend who saw me retweet one of his tweets (shoutout Lillie). She reached out to me saying she went to college with him and would love to help us get connected. To pass some time in the off-season, Cotillo decided to do a side project and host zoom writing workshops for aspiring sports journalists. He was inspired by people connecting with him and asking for advice, and because of the current state of the world right now where everyone is using Zoom, he thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get involved. So far, he has hosted two sections of the workshops. After I got connected with Cotillo, he invited me to participate in his workshop. I absolutely loved it. I learned so much and Cotillo provided lots of valuable insight to an industry I knew truly little about.
“The response was a lot more than I thought it would be when I had the idea” he said. “After a few years of experience and taking a unique path to this, I thought that I could give people some tools and tips and try and help them make it professionally… Hopefully I imparted some wisdom on everyone that has taken it so far.”
Being a huge baseball fan as a kid, and what started out as a hobby, Cotillo ran a Twitter account where he would tweet out the latest news around Major League Baseball. At just 18 years old, and a senior in high school, Cotillo broke his first major story. In 2013, the night before Thanksgiving, he broke the story of Rick Nolasco signing a $49 million deal with the Minnesota Twins.
“I just heard it from a source that it was a done deal, so I just tweeted it, and had a nervous waiting period where I was talking to my Dad waiting for someone else to confirm it.”
A few days later, Doug Fister, who was one of the best pitchers at the time, got traded from the Detroit Tigers to the Washington Nationals. Cotillo was the first to break this story as well as he claims that it was “one of the craziest moments of my life.” That night, he gained thousands of followers on Twitter and it was a whirlwind experience for him from there on out. This landed him interviews on MLB Network, NY Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. That year he and his family even got invited to attend the Winter Meetings in Orlando. Many wondered how a school kid was able to break these stories. He had a lot of people doubting him for being in this business at such a young age and questioning if he was doing things the right way.
When I asked him what it was like to make it as a young reporter he claimed, “the key to it was having big names in the industry not brushing me under the rug.” He said top reporters like Ken Rosenthal, Jeff Passan, and John Heyman would give him credit and say that he had the story first.
“They could have all pretended that I didn’t exist and say ‘we had the scoop first’ but obviously they are good journalists and are extremely successful in their fields. They were tweeting me, propping me up, and promoting me and that is kind of how my platform grew. I have been able to develop a relationship with all those guys and people all over baseball.”
Despite some criticism, Cotillo was able to gain the respect he deserved. “It would have been easy for people to have just pretended that this kid got lucky, but people respected my work ethic and respected that I got those scoops.”
A few months ago, I reached out to Barstool Sports personality, Jared Carrabis, and was able to ask him a few questions. I learned that before Barstool, Carrabis worked for a start-up Boston Sports blog called SportsReel Boston in 2013. Cotillo was working alongside Carrabis for this blog as well. Cotillo and Carrabis remain friends still to this day.
“I have known him [Carrabis] for a long time… it has been cool to see how far we come from that blog… me working for MassLive and Jared going the podcast route and then eventually ending up at Barstool and turning into what Section 10 and Starting 9 have in the last couple of years… it has been cool to see the journey and cool that we have been able to stay in it as long as we have.” It is truly inspiring hearing about their work ethic and seeing how much success both have achieved.
Cotillo went on to attend the University of North Carolina and is a proud Tar Heel graduate. Throughout his college career at UNC, he worked part time with SB Nation as an MLB insider and writer. He ran MLB Daily Dish which was one of SB Nation’s blogs as a site manager. He had a small staff working for him, so he was able to learn how to manage people at such a young age. He loved seeing things he was learning in class come to life. He found working and attending school at the same time to be super valuable.
“It is not always about the stuff you do in class. That stuff is important and getting good grades, but learning is the most important.” Cotillo emphasized the importance of taking what you learn and applying it to real-world scenarios to gain the best experiences.
At the end of college, Cotillo moved on from SB nation and applied for an opening as a Red Sox beat writer for MassLive. “It was the perfect timing and the perfect fit.” Growing up just outside of Boston, Cotillo was the biggest Red Sox fan. He grew up admiring all the media personnel on TV and radio who covered the Red Sox. He remembers thinking to himself what an amazing job they have being able to be at Fenway nearly every day. Today, some of the same people he admired as a kid he sees almost daily doing the beat. Although he admits he has lost some of his fan passion due to his career, his appreciation for Boston baseball and how much the fans care about the team has not changed for him at all. Cotillo takes pride in trying to be the link between the fan-base and the team.
“The goal of the media is to be the liaisons of the fans and the teams. I will just be talking to my dad and talking to my friends who care about the team, listening to what they care about and just try and get those questions answered for them.”
Being a native of Boston, he also found value in his job growing up there because he got to know what the media landscape was like. He knew it would be tough, but he is succeeding as he is about to start his third year with MassLive on the beat. Other famous sportswriters are noticing and acknowledging his work. Just a few weeks ago, Peter Gammons, a highly respected Major League Baseball journalist, tweeted out that the Red Sox coverage at MassLive is “truly remarkable.”
Cotillo says, “That’s as good as a compliment as you can get. I do not know what we did to deserve it. I know we work hard and try and do a comprehensive job… to have him appreciate our work just about means as much as it could.” The Red Sox MassLive coverage consists of Cotillo and his fellow colleague Chris Smith.
Like many of us during this crazy, unexpected year, Cotillo wondered how he could pass the time of quarantine and no baseball activity. He has a binder in his childhood room filled with autographed baseball cards that he gathered over the years attending games as a kid at Fenway. He first thought about selling the items on eBay but then had the idea of auctioning them off for charity. Cotillo put together an auction event on Twitter where all the money he earned would be donated to charity. Cotillo went on to raise $57,000.
“I wanted to make an impact. I have had a lot of cool experiences and have been blessed and lucky with a lot of cool things from World Series, to being in school for a national championship, to having great moments with my family, but there was nothing more rewarding than that” he said. Once Cotillo ran out of his own signed cards, other individuals in the industry started offering up their own personal items for the auction. “It was a combination of hundreds of people who were making a difference at a time when people needed it… it was cool to see the impact and cool to see people coming together.”
The choice of charity went to who ever was donating the item to be auctioned off. Cotillo hit about 30-40 different charities as 75% of the money went to food banks. Cotillo had a Mike Trout card that he got signed by Trout during in his rookie season at Fenway that went for $1,300. That money went to a local Anaheim food bank. When I asked if it was difficult giving away his childhood autographed collections Cotillo said,
“I have a lot of great memories going to get those autographs with my dad or my mom standing at Fenway before games, but we aren’t selling those, we were selling the items.” Being at his parents’ house early on in quarantine, Cotillo and his parents worked together during the late hours of the night mailing and shipping out the items.
“We get to keep the memories and experiences of actually getting the autographs and then came full circle when we parted with them. I joked it was like a family business at my house mailing them out. We made a lot of cool memories together doing that.”
Although breaking news is what allowed for Cotillo to get his foot in the door, today he enjoys doing feature stories on players, coaches, and other team personnel. One of his favorite stories he did was on former Red Sox pitcher Daniel Bard who just recently won 2020 Comeback Player of the Year. He also really enjoyed a piece he did on Red Sox rookie pitcher Tanner Houck about the rookie’s charity campaign, “Pitch for Adoption.” Cotillo says,
“It is cool when you get to do a long feature and really get to connect with somebody, that is a lot more meaningful to me than the breaking news.”
It is no doubt at just 25 years old, Cotillo has had some spectacular and memorable experiences. From seeing the team win in 2013 at Fenway, to attending the last seven Winter Meetings, and to being in the locker room when the Sox won in 2018, Cotillo’s favorite experience was being able to witness one of the greatest World Series games of all time: Game 3 of the 2018 World Series in Los Angeles. Cotillo describes that whole experience as being “out of a dream.” He described Dodgers Stadium being cooler than he could have ever imagined. That game went 18 innings and was seven hours long and was just “an all-time duel” between the Red Sox and the Dodgers. He saw celebrities like Matt Damon, Bet Afflek, Kobe Bryant, and Jimmy Kimmel in the media tunnel pre-game. Although he traveled six hours on a plane the day prior and being at the ballpark on game day for a total of thirteen hours, Cotillo claimed it was almost impossible to be tired with what he was experiencing right in front of him. He says that this game is going to be “tough to beat in terms of experiences.”
From getting to know Chris through his writing workshops and talking to him about his career so far, I am truly inspired by the hard work and dedication he has put in to get him to where he is today. Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisCotillo and follow his Red Sox coverage on MassLive.com
