Branford Woman Hits Big Time As Major League Baseball Reporter

Originally written by Jack Kramer, Correspondent

BRANFORD, CT – Growing up in a family that ate, drank and slept baseball it’s not a big surprise that Brittany Ghiroli is living out the fantasy of being a beat reporter for a major league baseball team.

Brittany, who said she had no choice but to being “raised a Yankee fan because my parents Louis and Maureen were huge Yankee fans,” has been covering the Baltimore Orioles for Major League Baseball since 2010.

In 2013, she became MLB Network’s Orioles Insider and she also is CBS radio’s Orioles Insider reporter. (To sign up for Branford breaking news alerts and more, click here.)

Let Brittany, who in 2014 was named Baltimore Magazine’s Best Reporter (not just sports but news, too), tell the story of how it all happened.

“How I got into it was, as a student at Michigan State, I was a journalism major. I juggled that and being on the varsity swim team for two years and then when I got an offer for an internship with Fox Sports Detroit, I chose that instead.

“That led to freelance work with FSN Detroit and College Sports TV, as a broadcast assistant.”

In her senior year, Brittany said she interned a semester at the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C., where she focused on general news and sports reporting.

“When I graduated in the winter of 2007, it was when the newspaper industry was going south. I was offered a job at a small paper in Florida, and a couple of internships, including for MLB.com. Everyone said “take the job, it’s safer,” but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to jump right into pro sports.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

She would end up working part-time for MLB.com, even covering the Yankees in their last World Series win in 2009, and eventually, in 2010 she was hired as the Orioles beat reporter for MLB.com at the age of 22.

Brittany, who lives in Baltimore with her boyfriend John and her rescue pit-bull Thor, says an average day for her is arriving at the ballpark around 3 p.m. She works the clubhouse, spends a few minutes chatting with Orioles manager Buck Showalter.

During the game she’s keeping score, tweeting updates, answering emails. She winds up writing a game story, and some sidebar stories on each game.

Brittany said she usually gets home about midnight, “but if the games goes long, or there’s extra innings or a rain delay, who knows?”

Recently, Brittany’s baseball beat has expanded into national work. She has been going to MLB’s New York offices monthly to do some work.

Even though she’s obviously hit the big-time, she does reflect back on her early days as a major league reporter. She said she got “a little star-struck the first time I interviewed Derek Jeter,” attributing that to her family’s long held devotion to the Yankees.

Brittany said her family has moved to San Diego, so she’s only been back to Branford a few times the past few years.

She adds, though: “I miss Ashley’s Ice Cream and some of the great restaurants. Baltimore just cannot do pizza and good Mexican food.”

Besides baseball, Brittany has co-founded a website called Athlete Daily with her sister April. It is called www.theathletedaily.com “I’m really into Cross Fit and lifting.”

(Editor's Note: This story first ran previously but here it is again in case you missed it.)