Media get a lot of criticism but most sports journalists work very hard late into the night. After the fans leave, writers remain at the stadium, trying to tell the story of what they saw for morning readers. And when they leave the park, the area around the ballpark is usually quiet and sometimes dangerous.
Barry Bloom and Thomas Harding of MLB.com were robbed at gunpoint early Tuesday morning after leaving the media gate at Great American Ballpark around 1:30 a.m. They had been covering the visiting Rockies playing the Reds, which had been delayed Monday night by rain.
Bloom lost $500 in cash and Harding lost $100 in addition to both losing their credit cards to a young thug dressed in red.
"I thought the guy was a fan as he approached, but he said, 'We can do this the easy way or the hard way,'" Bloom told the Dayton Daily News. "I started to walk away and he began yelling at me and pulled this big gun that looked like a Glock. He said, 'Put your wallets on the ground.' We did and he picked them up and ran off."
The original Dayton Daily News post by Hal McCoy was edited to remove the details of the robbery, but Bloom, who was quoted in the report, also confirmed the mugging on Twitter, saying he is doing as well as can be expected.
