NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Baseball and politics are two of America's most passionate past times. Chelsea Janes '12 has had the unique opportunity to be immersed in both worlds while working for The Washington Post. Janes spent four years as the beat writer for the Washington Nationals, covered Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 Presidential election and has recently returned to the diamond as the Post's national baseball writer.
 
"It's been a whirlwind," said Janes, a four-year letterwinner for the Yale softball team.
 
She began on the Nationals' beat in 2014 and journeyed across the country chronicling the team for four seasons. It was a memorable experience for Janes, an avid baseball fan as a child in Western Massachusetts.
 
"The travel is grueling, but it's nice because it's big cities, and I grew up just loving baseball so checking off stadiums was definitely not a chore in any way," she said.
 
It was an exciting time to follow the Nationals, who were consistent contenders and made two playoff appearances.
 
But after four years on the beat, it was time for a change. When her editors asked if she'd be interested in working as a part of the Post's 2020 election coverage, she was all in.
 
"I was ready to try something else," said Janes, who did assist in the Post's reporting when the Nationals won the 2019 World Series. "In the back of my mind I knew baseball had been a really good experience and not one I left because I didn't like it, but more because [politics] was something to try."
 
Jones, a history major at Yale, had a passing interest in politics but nothing like her passion for baseball. The move was an adjustment.
 
"There a lot of people you see reporting on politics who are immersed in that whole world and have been their whole lives as I was with baseball," she said.
 
It helped that a number of the political reporters were also big baseball fans.
 
"Early on I had a lot of people who wanted to talk to me about baseball because they knew me from covering the Nationals, so I could talk about something that they were comfortable with," she said. "But there was a lot to prove in terms of am I serious about what I'm doing, do I know what I'm talking about. I had to overcome that a little bit."
 
There are similarities to the baseball and campaign beats, which helped in the transition as well.
 
"You really have to build relationships to get to the heart of what is happening," Janes said. "In baseball you get to know the players but most of the information you are going to get comes from people around them, and that is true of the candidate too. I didn't really talk to Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg very often, but I got a sense of what is really happening and what their motivations were by talking to people around them.
 
"One thing I was told starting out on the baseball beat was that if you write something negative you want to be the first person [in the clubhouse] the next morning, so they can talk to you and tell you what they think of it. I felt that was great advice for politics too, just to own and believe what I was writing and don't try to hide from them."
 
Janes was known for her clever and witty posts on social media in her baseball days. Covering politics required a different approach.
 
"You can foster a fun environment as though you are talking to friends about [baseball]," she explained. "In politics, that is really different for good reason. The stakes are high. You can't be flippant when a lot of the decisions that are made effect people's lives. I don't know if I ever mastered political social media, but my goal was if I can add something that [readers] are not going to get somewhere else, and it was fact, not opinion, then great. If not, then there is probably no need to say it."
 
Janes quickly proved her mettle on the political beat. Her first assignment was Kamala Harris's campaign for President. Janes spent the first eight months of 2019 following Harris on her numerous campaign rallies all across the country. Harris dropped out of the race late in the year, but Janes had a feeling she might be heard from again.
 
"When I talked to people at events, you could tell they were interested in her, and they felt she might be something they hadn't seen before," Janes said.
 
After a brief stint with Bernie Sanders, Janes was assigned to the up-and-coming Pete Buttigieg campaign.
 
That led to one of the most memorable moments of her campaign coverage, a ride through West Hollywood, California, in the back seat of Buttigeig's SUV and an exclusive interview.
 
"He was pretty candid, and it was normal and relaxed, and it is something I won't forget because those moments are so few and far between even for people who have been on the trail for years," Janes remembered. "I felt so lucky to catch him at the right time and get that kind of access before he was too big."
 
Janes' days of travelling the nation covering the campaign came to a halt last March when COVID-19 hit. Instead her focus switched to covering the pandemic.
 
"I covered COVID from my couch," she said. "I called a lot of mayors, governors, people I wouldn't have normally talked to and I learned a lot."
 
But when Harris was selected as Joe Biden's running mate, Janes was back to the political beat, covering Harris again, albeit remotely.
 
Janes was still on her couch on election night, following the results on television like millions of other Americans.
 
"I had three stories ready," she said. "Kamala Harris is the Vice President, Kamala Harris is not the Vice President and the we don't know yet story."
 
Soon after the election results finally became official, Janes was named the Post's national baseball writer.
 
"I realized I missed baseball a lot," she said. "The campaign was an incredible experience, but I grew up watching baseball, and it's a world that means a lot to me. If there was an opportunity to be immersed in it again, I was going to do it."
 
Now, instead of just covering the Nationals, she will be focused on telling interesting stories from all across Major League Baseball.
 
And like she did when she covered the Nationals, she'll use her experience from her playing days at Yale to assist her.
 
"I'm able to understand that there a lot of different roles that people can bring that are not strictly performance related," said Janes, who appeared in 81 games for the Bulldogs and had 20 hits. "I got to know the game differently playing at Yale."
 
Her career as a Bulldog did not go unnoticed when she was on the Nationals' beat. One of the other writers researched her statistics and shared them with players, coaches and the front office.
 
"That got thrown at me a lot," said Janes, who was recipient of the team's Barbara Chou Leadership Award as a senior and two-time winner of the Andy Van Etten Coaches Award.
 
Janes, who remains close with many of her former Yale teammates, continues to follow the softball program when she can. "Every time I see they are playing Harvard, I get a little riled up," she jokes.
 
Janes also remains a strong supporter of all of Yale's athletics program. In addition to playing softball, she was a sports reporter for the Yale Daily News and served as a play-by-play announcer for the broadcasts of women's hockey games.
 
Those experiences helped lead her to a career in journalism and the very unique opportunity of covering the World Series champions one year and the eventual Vice President of the United States the next.
 
"I remember watching the inauguration on TV and seeing [Harris's] motorcade pull up and thinking oh my gosh I was in Iowa with her two years ago," she said. "It was a real reminder of what the stakes were."