Reflecting On Getting Fired On Your Birthday

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Photo By ©J. Alexander Dolan

My 25th birthday will be one that I won’t forget for some time.

I was heading to my car to interview Esmir Bajraktarevic for a standard preseason interview when I checked my email. There was an email from someone I had never had any sort of conversation with and they had an SB Nation email address.

Wonder what that could be about I ponder.

“You may not be surprised to hear that Vox Media has been experiencing a downturn in advertising alongside others in the media and tech industries. Given the economic climate we have had to make the difficult and careful decision to pull back coverage in some areas across our network where we will not invest in long-term growth. As a result, many communities — including most of the MLS sites — will be impacted. Your community is among those impacted and will no longer be supported and monetized by Vox Media.

“While we will no longer be supporting these communities, that does not necessarily mean the sites will be shutting down. We hope that many of the impacted sites and their brands will continue to operate and thrive under your leadership.”

Worst birthday gift ever.

What ensued was essentially chaos. While I did interview Esmir, my mind might as well have been on Pluto. I mean what website was I supposed to put this interview on? The big bad wolf had essentially blown our internet house down.

Immediately I knew that I didn’t want to just pack up and go home. I was quite literally living out my childhood dreams of “working” in sports, covering games from the stadium, and participating in pressers in and out of the locker room.

The rest of the staff was on the same page. We began looking at our options and eventually landed on

Substack

.

Now I feel it is necessary to mention the outpouring of support and positive messages we received. This is a theme of the last few years of TBM. The support and love has been massive.

It kind of sucks that sometimes it takes something bad occurring for people to praise you or an entity. As a society, we could do a better job of giving people their flowers.

But I digress.

We all wanted to keep Steve Stoehr’s creation alive. It’s why our initials are still TBM. For legal reasons, we didn’t know if we would ever be able to use The Bent Musket again so ended up trading a bent musket for a blazing one.

J. Alexander Dolan

ended up designing this nifty page along with the logos we use.

Seth Macomber

and the rest of the team worked to have content ready for the site’s launch. Besides that, they provided moral support and levity at a time where it was desperately needed.

We launched the site and once again you supported us. Whether it be signing up for free or becoming a paid subscriber, you were there for us and for that we all thank you.

Then came the most controversial Revs season in club history, Rhode Island got a soccer club, and Vermont Green continued to be the coolest club ever (in my humble opinion).

Oh and Hartford Athletic, a club we had previously neglected had a terrible season. You could argue that the biggest addition for Hartford was us adding a beat writer in

Nathan Robillard

.

Nate was like a lot of you. He saw the news that SB Nation had decided to pull back its MLS coverage and wondered what he could do. After seeing a tweet from Revolution president Brian Billelo, Nate DM’d me asking if he could write for us.

Who would’ve known that he would be the lifeblood of the Hartford beat and has provided some crucial coverage to the team. Getting to have a “TBM Derby,” with Hartford facing off against the Revs in the U.S. Open Cup was a truly amazing moment. I’m looking for the next one when RIFC faces off against Hartford this year.

But Nate wasn’t the only addition we made. In total, we went from having seven members of our staff to more than double the amount covering the likes of the Revolution, Revs II, Hartford Athletic, Rhode Island FC, and Vermont Green FC.

We also were lucky enough to cover the MLS All-Star Game where besides having a lot of fun in the Nation’s capital, we got to go to Arsenal training and I got to go to The White House with

J. Alexander Dolan

. To recap we went from no website to watching Bernie Sanders go on an amazing rant at the most secure place in the United States.

And here we are a year later. We have created a wonderful community (with all of your help) and are preparing for yet another year of coverage. Our first game covered will be the USMNT January friendly as

John McGloughlin

is down there to get us some sick photos of DJ and Esmir. We will once again be your home for all thing Revolution, Hartford Athletic, and Vermont Green and will also be covering RIFC in their debut year.

This isn’t a plea for more subscribers (though that would be sick), this is just an expression of gratitude. Once again thank you all for your support and helping a kid live out his dreams.

So hopefully this birthday will be better than the last (I mean it will be, I’m going away and will be in the middle of nowhere with the homies from my Church). I imagine I will not be fired once again though Dolan might try to even though he can’t.

So once again thank you for all your support. Let’s have a great 2024 and may the second year of The Blazing Musket be better than the first (though the first one was pretty wild).