My Goodbye to Deadspin
Our own Drew Magary bids farewell to his other home
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NOTE: This post originally appeared on drewmagary.kinja.com under the headline “This Is How It’s Gonna Work,” but has migrated here because G/O Media is threatening to get rid of its DIY Kinja sites.
I resigned from Deadspin today. No more Funbag questions. No more Jamboroos. No more telling you why your team, and your children’s television program, and the St. Louis Cardinals, and Christmas catalogs, and mayonnaise all suck. At least, not here (or there, I should say; I no longer have posting privileges at Deadspin proper, and so I gotta post this to this here). Nothing stopping me from taking those toys elsewhere. But alas, the time has come for you and me to part ways here at this particular corner of the internet.
I learned about this place from Sports Illustrated. That was 14 years ago. Holy shit. I read a short item about Deadspin in an SI print edition, logged on, and felt as if I had been waiting to discover this place my whole life. I was a commenter at Deadspin first. Then, in 2007, Leitch let me start the Jamboroo for a weekly freelance stipend. A few years later, AJ Daulerio took over and let me start the Funbag column (originally called Open Mailbag Tuesday, which was not terribly catchy) and do other regular freelance work on top of it. In 2012, Craggs managed to get me aboard full-time and this has been my internet home ever since. It’s been a good home. It bursts into flames roughly every four months, but that’s the risk you take when you’re firing off takes that are just THAT hot. I fisked my own kid’s Christmas wish list for this site. I took the SAT again. I fought a mirror. I wrote about my son almost dying. I wrote about being a deeply lonely and depressed college kid. I also wrote some truly nasty shit, much of which I am no longer terribly fond of.
And of course, the people of this site ended up literally saving my life less than a year ago, which makes me all the more heartbroken that I must now leave. I haven’t been back to New York since I nearly died. I wanted to surprise the rest of the staff in the office one day by bringing them cheesy bread. That’s not a joke. Julianne at Jez said they all love cheesy bread from the shithole Islanders bar near the old office, so I wanted to buy them some. But…
