If you lived on just the right block in Brooklyn in the ‘90s, you’d likely find a young girl at the corner store, buying a newspaper whenever she could and hurriedly leafing through the pages before fixating on the sports section. That girl would be Laura Albanese, who is now a sports reporter for Newsday.
Although the male-dominated field of sports reporting would hardly be a conceivable career to a younger Albanese, her passion for sports had already taken root. Her childhood in a low-income immigrant family headed by strict parents left little opportunities for entertainment. Hazy, humid summer break afternoons made long by the absence of school, combined with the fact that sports channels were the only ones she could access, brought Albanese to America’s pastime: baseball.
As the only baseball fan in her family, Albanese had no one to explain the rules to her. So, she made a game out of figuring out the rules on her own and faced a steep learning curve head-on by reading pages upon pages of sports articles until she fell in love with the sport.
Albanese’s words were precise and thoughtful as she pondered the aspect that drew her to baseball: the narrative behind it.
“It tells you a little bit about life. It tells you a little bit about the people who play it and why they play it, sure, but it also has its villains and its heroes, and it has its ups and its downs… 162 games [in a season], that’s a journey,” Albanese said. These stories of perseverance, underdogs and resiliency deeply resonate with people, and as someone who admires the narrative aspect of baseball, Albanese is both proud and grateful to now be able to write about them.
Albanese also loves the connections and community that sports foster. She remembers people’s reactions to Pete Alonso’s triumphant 9th-inning go-ahead home run that sent the Mets to the NLDS this year: “People are just so happy, and they’re like, ‘well, you know, I had my dad’s urn here because he taught me how to watch, how to love the Mets, and he’s watching it with me’ … I think it’s an honor to tell stories that make people feel connected to their past and connected to their families or their friends.”
Albanese shared one of her own personal connections to the sport, remembering the feeling of being frozen on the couch during the 1999 Robin Ventura grand slam single game, terrified that if she moved, the Mets’ rally would fall short.
“It made me think about how cool that was, that you could feel that strongly and that connected to something that had absolutely nothing to do with you.”
She also reflected on sports as a place to experience all of the emotions that arise in our personal lives. Nail-biting wins or heartbreaking losses allow us to indulge in our emotions in a way that feels simple and easier to deal with, not just by ourselves, but with a community.
“We lose things every single day, but we often lose them in a vacuum… when you’re heartbroken with sports… it’s just a reflection of all the other losses that we have, but you’re not alone,” she said.
Sports were primarily an escape for Albanese, especially moments such as Mike Piazza’s home run on Sept. 21, 2001, the first home run in New York City since the tragic events on 9/11. On Sept. 11, 2001, Albanese returned home from school not knowing whether her brother was alive or dead, vividly remembering ash coating the steps to her home. Fortunately, her brother survived, but the tragedy hung heavy everywhere in the city. In this emotional aftermath, turning on that baseball game was the first moment her agitated thoughts fell silent. As she spoke, a sense of wonder at the impact of that legendary moment seeped into her grave, emotional tone.
“I remember turning on that game, and immediately just being able to shut off my brain for the first time in a long time and just enjoy it. And people were crying, and the heaviness of 9/11 was everywhere, but Mike Piazza hit that home run. What a great moment where people can just feel like, no, nothing’s going to be okay, but this moment can be okay, and that’s all you can have, this moment’s going to be okay, and it’s a stupid sport, but whatever,” she said, finishing with a shrug and a laugh.
Albanese’s childhood corner store escapades, some the few outings approved by her parents, cultivated her affinity for sports journalism. In particular, she fondly remembers the first time she saw Lisa Olson’s picture above a feature story. For her, having a figure she could aspire to be like was deeply formative. With a laugh, Albanese recalls thinking, “That’s a person that looks — not like me, but close enough, like, I’ll take it.” Several of Olson’s articles have made it into the scrapbook of favorite articles that Albanese made as a child (and still owns).
Albanese began her journey when she studied journalism at Brooklyn College. She intended to become a news journalist, as the idea of being a female sports journalist still felt far-fetched even when she became the editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn College Kingsman and found herself overseeing the paper’s sports section among others. An internship as a news writer at Newsday ultimately led to her introduction to the sports reporting world. When the paper was unable to offer her a full-time position in news at the end of the internship, the sports editor, Hank Winnicki, who had noticed her spending all her free time watching the baseball games in the sports section, offered her a part-time position reporting on high school sports.
Albanese is grateful to be part of an organization that gave her a chance where many others would have ruled her out because of her gender. Although her story is inspiring because her passion and knowledge were recognized, giving her a chance as a qualified young writer, Albanese emphasizes that misogyny in sports journalism is still a major issue.
“I got very lucky at Newsday that I had an editor who was way beyond that point where he understood that not only do women belong in sports, but we need different types of voices when telling these stories … I lucked out, but it’s not life everywhere,” she said, her tone serious. Even within a relatively supportive organization, she was told by a coworker on her very first day in high school sports that, “there are no boobs in sports.”
Being taken seriously by players is another issue; Albanese remembers one pitcher who snidely asked if she knew the difference between balls and strikes. Recounting her years of experiences as a clubhouse reporter, she remarked, “When you’re a young woman, you often walk into a room and you have to prove that you know what you’re talking about. And when you’re a young man, you walk into a room and people assume you know what you’re talking about.”
Despite the misogyny she’s faced in the industry, her deeply personal connection to sports motivates her to keep her passion for her job ignited. Sports were an escape from a difficult reality for Albanese, so she writes for those who, like her, need that escape.
“It was such a lifeline growing up … I didn’t have much, and I had a pretty hard background, and sports kind of helped me with it. I take it seriously when I write stories, because … I want people to feel something and hopefully something good about these things because sports are an escape. There’s no way around it,” she said slowly and thoughtfully.
Then, a smile invades her face, revealing her hope that her writing pays the feeling she cherishes forward. “So, if you’re going to escape, man, let me tell you the best possible story of how this thing that you loved or this thing that broke your heart, how it happened, you deserve that narrative.”
“And hopefully, I know it’s stupid, but hopefully I can make someone’s day a little bit better the way that somebody made my day a little bit better when I was 12 years old, growing up in garbage,” Albanese said.
