Hillary Bird

I am a Midwest Farmer's Daughter that found happiness in the Big City.

My career as a sports reporter has taken me across the country, writing about every sport from boxing to speed walking to hockey and baseball on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. I've settled most recently at a paper outside Chicago and in a town that is surrounded by Chicago on three sides.

I live eight miles from a MLB baseball stadium, which almost isn't close enough. I've been scoring baseball games since I was old enough to pay the dollar for a scorecard and learn how, and am living the dream covering an independent baseball team from Gary, Ind.

I am a lapsed bass player, with an instrument that longingly sits in the corner while I play with my beautiful daughter across the room. One day, I hope that she inherits more than my affinity to smile, and finds an instrument to call her own. Her daddy has already claimed the bagpipes.