My best work of 2018
I’m about a week late to the “Best of 2018” season, which is typically tired and played out by the time we reach Christmas. But on the final work days before Christmas, I was wrapping up my three-week honeymoon in New Zealand. So, yeah, you can probably tell 2018 was a great year for me.
But I also have a lot of work that I’m proud of from the past year. I started looking through it all and this has definitely been one of the best years of my career—very possibly the best—so here’s the list of my personal favorites.
As always, I want to thank everybody who read, watched, listened, clicked, shared and reached out. I’m fortunate to do what I do for a living, and I couldn’t keep doing it without the people who have supported me throughout and the new people who have taken an interest in my work along the way.
This year I’m just going to list all my favorite stories, videos and podcasts chronologically:
Olympics:
2018 started with a bang, as I realized a life-long career goal of covering the Olympics in-person from the actual host city. Before the Games started, I had a Q&A with Maame Biney, the teenage short-track speedskater who became an instant star. It’s one of my favorites because an excerpt of this interview was also my first real story to make SI’s print magazine, another life-long dream of mine.
Once I got to the Olympics, I did all kinds of stuff. Game stories covering the U.S. women’s ice hockey team and the U.S. men’s curling team, both of which went on to win gold medals. A feature on the first Nigerian ever to compete at the Winter Olympics. A crazy story on a Korean skier who was featured in SI during the 1960 Olympics, who told me through a translator about how much that article changed his life. A food story on an insanely gluttonous day sampling Jeju black pig, kimchi that had been aged three years and more interesting local food. And a rookie journal detailing my whole experience there.
I also made a fun video where I went snowtubing with American luge silver medalist Chris Mazdzer. (The race was closer than it looks!)
Once I got home, I taped two episodes of The Mitch Goldich Podcast, my podcast where I interview people in sports media about their jobs. One was with Yahoo’s Jeff Passan, one of the top reporters around, and we had a great chat about all the stories he wrote/broke in Korea. The other was with Hannah Keyser of Deadspin, and we talked about both of us covering the Olympics for the first time. You can subscribe here for those, plus other old episodes. (Sadly those were the only two episodes of that podcast I taped all year. I wish I had done more, but it was a busy year and I do those for free in my spare time. But subscribe because I have some ideas for 2019!)
Spring/Summer:
After the Olympics, the Sixers won their final 16 games of the season heading into the playoffs, so of course I wrote a State of the Process update about Sam Hinkie.
In June I wrote my magnum opus, which I had been thinking about for a few years. It was on “Ringz Culture” and the way we talk about championships. It’s about more than just basketball, but I framed it around Warriors-Cavs IV and spoke to Steve Kerr, Scottie Pippen and Paul Pierce for the piece. I’m very happy with how this one turned out.
Football season:
During training camp, I sat down with Eagles coach Doug Pederson for an interview about life as the defending Super Bowl champ. I know this was “just a Q&A” but I was also really happy with this one. I think that because I follow the team so closely, I was able to ask a few questions that got some great answers out of him. Then they put an excerpt of this on the back page of SI. Growing up as a kid, I picked up every issue of SI and flipped it right to the back page first, then one day in August I was on the back page. So that was neat.
I also wrote about how my friends and I have a punters-only fantasy league, and I actually spoke to three NFL punters about what it’s like being typically excluded from the fantasy world.
Swing in the Dark:
My biggest project of the year: I got to produce a documentary that I pitched to SI TV called Swing in the Dark. I’ve spent the last few years getting to know some of the best blind golfers in the country and we created a 23-minute documentary on the U.S. Blind Golf Association’s national championship this August in Nashville.
It was an extremely gratifying project to work on, and I’ll be writing more on it soon.
To watch, you’ll need to create an account on SI TV’s website. You can either pay for a monthly subscription or do a seven-day free trial. (Either way, you’ll also get access to a ton of other cool original video content from SI.) I really hope you check it out. Here’s a trailer:
Other fun stuff:
I am still the host of Next Question, Sports Illustrated’s live trivia game show. We had 25 episodes in 2018 and you can watch them all on Next Question’s Facebook page.
I’m also still hosting my food podcast, Mitch Eats Food, which had 17 new episodes in 2018. They are mostly short episodes on individual meals, either by myself or with a friend. Some of my favorite episodes were from 2018, in New York, Philly, Austin, Nashville and South Korea. You can subscribe in iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or Google Play.
Here are a few of my favorites to give you a taste (get it?!):
Woodrow’s cheesesteaks with house-made wiz in Philly with guest Greg Patchak: Power ranking meats at la Barbecue in Austin with guest Matt Smith: Hattie B’s hot chicken in Nashville with guest Dave Seperson: Custom wedding cake tasting with guest Sam Ashinoff-Goldich:On to 2019:
And that’s it for 2018. If you want to keep up in 2019, follow me… uhh… everywhere.
Twitter: @mitchgoldich
Instragram: @mitchgoldich
Facebook public page: Mitch Goldich sports
Subscribe to The Mitch Goldich Podcast
Subscribe to Mitch Eats Food
Like Mitch Eats Food’s Instagram: @mitcheatsfoodpod
Like the game show’s Facebook page: Next Question
Thanks again to everyone for your support. Can’t wait to share more cool projects in 2019!
Follow @mitchgoldich