Here's some good news AND bad news if you're a Phillies fan: Reigning Sportswriter of the Year Joe Posnanski is leaving Sports Illustrated and bolting for the greener pastures of the Gannett Pie Chart Collective:
Posnanski has told the magazine he’s moving on, and his next stop is the USA Today/MLB Advanced Media joint venture that was announced last month.
The bad news here is that Posnanski leaves a job that was particularly well-suited to his talents. At SI, Posnanski was able to maintain his insanely prolific personal blog and work on big magazine features and articles like this one on Chase Utley. SI gave Posnanski the freedom and the resources to cover whatever he wanted, however he wanted, and that was a boon for all baseball fans.
The good news is that Posnanski, despite spending the past year writing Joe Paterno's biography (whoop dee!!!!), has always been a baseball man first and foremost. He may write about football and basketball on occasion, but Pos would spend every day hiding under a dugout bench if he could. So while his role at USA Today is currently undefined, the fact that he'll be part of a new joint venture with MLB means that you'll get more of America's best baseball writer -- by a good measure -- writing more about baseball, and therefore writing more about every team in baseball, your Phillies included.
Having Joe write about your hometown team is like a little present, and now you're likely to get it more often. YAY!
