For those of you who read our sister sites The Dream Shake or Battle Red Blog, you probably already know who I am.
For the baseball-centric folks on here, I’ll catch all of you up.
My name is Jeremy Brener and I am a 20-year old broadcast journalism student at the University of Central Florida. I also happen to be a Houston native and Astros lifer.
I believe I am the first person since my mentor Ryan Dunsmore to appear on The Dream Shake, Battle Red Blog and The Crawfish Boxes, so that’s pretty cool I guess. I may have been taken out of Houston when I moved to Orlando for college, but Houston was not taken out of me.
I grew up on the days of the Killer B’s, in the twilight of the careers of Bagwell and Biggio. And I met Morgan Ensberg at a Rockets game and I remember reacting like he was some super famous Hollywood movie star. I have a thing for third basemen: Morgan Ensberg, Alex Bregman, Matt Dominguez, all Astros icons.
I have not played a single inning of baseball in my life. I was never a Little Leaguer and the closest I ever got to baseball was substituting for my friend in our IM Softball league and they put me at catcher because I was super inexperienced. I did, however, get an RBI in the game, so that’s cool.
However, my younger brother was a Little Leaguer and was a baseball historian. So, naturally, I picked up on it. Baseball has one of the most intricate histories I’ve ever studied and unlike other sports, baseball has the best storytelling. Not every game in a 162-game season over the course of 100+ years is going to matter, but the arc each story carries is phenomenal.
The first year I ever followed baseball, the Astros were one win away from their first World Series and the Red Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino. As a six-year old kid, it could not have been a more perfect time to follow the sport. Although I might not have understood every storyline perfectly back then, I knew what the Red Sox did in ‘04, what the Astros did in ‘05, what the White Sox did in ‘05, was historic.
Those same arcs have continued to creep into today’s MLB.
The Royals, Cubs, and Astros have all broken long droughts in the past three years and it has been remarkable to see how cities come together with a common denominator like sport. No matter people’s differences in religion, political views, gender identity or sexual orientation, people unite when it comes to music, tragedy, and sports. And it was beautiful to see that from my own city, Houston, Texas, when Hurricane Harvey hit a year ago and the Astros rallied to win their first World Series ever.
That was when I knew I had to be apart of The Crawfish Boxes. I have been involved with Houston’s SB Nation sites since 2016 with TDS and last year with BRB. I also have written for Outsports.com since 2015, the place where I got my start at SBN and recently helped open up Black and Gold Banneret, SB Nation’s UCF blog. I don’t know if many people can say they contribute for five very different SB Nation blogs, but I’m glad to say that I am here and I am super excited to be apart of TCB during the stretch run.
I look forward to helping build this community and gear it up during this World Series run and I’m excited to see the city of Houston and all Astros fans come together as we look to repeat.