Alanna Rizzo worked for the Dodgers as an on-air journalist from 2014 through the team’s 2020 world championship season. She recently announced that, after years of being in a long-distance relationship, she was leaving the job with the Dodgers to move to the East Coast where her fiancé is based.In an interview with The Athletic, she called it “the toughest decision I’ve ever made in my life.”
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Rizzo said she is not retiring from the business and that she will always be a Dodgers fan. I caught up with her this week to get her thoughts on the team, her favorite memories of her time in Los Angeles and what she’s looking to do next.
So have you fully moved from L.A.? Where are you right now?
Yeah. I’m out in Wrentham, Mass., which is about 45 minutes south of Boston.
What is it like not having your first spring training in, I don’t know, how many years?
Fourteen years. And it’s so weird. It’s incredibly disorienting. When you have spent the past 14 years doing something, it becomes woven into the fabric of who you are. I was with the Dodgers for seven years and covered the Rockies before that and worked for MLB Network before that. Not being in Arizona right now is incredibly strange.
Do you think you’ll follow a team every day now that you’re no longer doing it for a living? Or will you take a breather away from baseball?
I love baseball. That’s the one sport I can watch every day no matter what teams are playing. I think I’ll always follow the Dodgers. Having spent so much time around the team and the fans, I can’t imagine not following them. Even though the Rockies were my hometown team.
What makes the Dodgers so special to you?
Well aside from being treated so well by the organization in general, I just think there’s a history around the Dodgers that just isn’t there with most teams. I got to work with Hall of Famers like Jaime Jarrín and Vin Scully. I would chat with Don Newcombe all the time before he passed away, and the same with Tommy Lasorda. Sandy Koufax is also someone who comes to spring training or regular-season games. Not many teams can boast this many legends just hanging out.
I know that a lot of teams think they have the most passionate fans in baseball, but there is something about Dodgers fans where you can tell their fandom was passed down from generation to generation. Especially when Vin was there, you had grandmothers and granddaughters listening to the same man call Dodgers games. I think Clayton (Kershaw) said that, after the World Series win, he watched videos of families just sobbing together. Obviously, there was a whole added layer of emotion last year because of the pandemic, but the Dodgers are something that families share together. And it just feels like a special, sacred thing.
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Do you have a favorite game that you were a part of?
Obviously, this team won the division every year I was working for (SportsNet LA) full time, and they went to three World Series and won one. So there were a lot of exciting moments. But for me, the one game that stands out was when Hyun-jin Ryu hit a home run.
Nomar (Garciaparra) and I were working out in the left-field pavilion during that broadcast, and we’d all been waiting forever for Ryu to homer and then he finally did. I think it was a Sunday day game toward the end of the year. I had (Joe Davis’) call in my ear. To be out there with the fans when something like that happened was so cool because it made me really feel like a fan. I grabbed Nomar on the arm, and we were just so happy in that moment.
As for other games, Kershaw’s no-hitter is up there. That happened in my first year working full time for the Dodgers, and he no-hit the team I used to cover so that was pretty memorable.
What’s the loudest you ever heard Dodger Stadium get?
The playoffs are always loud, but walk-offs can get as loud as playoff games. There was one year when we had three different rookies walk off three straight games. And the end of that third game — I think it was Will Smith who got the hit — that was probably the loudest I’ve heard Dodger Stadium not during the playoffs.
Is there a memorable postgame interview that will stick with you forever?
David Freese was so unbelievably honest and raw and funny. He always used to poke fun at himself, too, so he was just the best postgame interview. I don’t remember what game it was, but there was a situation where he didn’t make his way around the bases very gracefully and we joked about it afterward, how he was like a ninja out there. This was toward the end of his career, obviously.
With Kiké Hernández, you never knew what you were gonna get. Any time I got to interview Kershaw on the field after a game was great because that meant he had pitched a complete game. Complete games don’t really happen anymore.
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How did your postgame interviewing style change over the years?
Well, they won so many games that I got really good at dodging Gatorade baths. Staying dry is the main hazard of covering such a good team. In 2014, I went into the clubhouse after they clinched something, and I thought I was being really smart wearing a poncho with a hood on it. Then Kenley Jansen poured a beer in the hood and lifted the hood over my head (laughs). I learned not to bother with goggles because those guys were all taller than me anyway, so there was no hope. You always want to wear clothes you can just throw out afterward.
In 2019, Body Glove sent me a Dodger blue wetsuit to wear for postgame celebrations, then they lost to the Nationals in the first round and I never got to wear it. So maybe that was a jinx.
What was covering 2020 like for you as a broadcaster?
It was incredibly difficult. I was up in Suite 211 at Dodger Stadium for home games and road games doing interviews virtually. So it was really difficult to get a sense of anything. In the postseason, I was in Texas, but not in the same hotel as the team. It took an hour after the final out of the World Series for me to even get an interview with a player because of logistics. I was obviously happy they won, but when they win the one year that you can’t be there on the field to do the job like you’re used to, you do feel a little bit robbed.
So much of what we do stems from informal pregame conversations we have in the dugout or in the clubhouse. Being there every day, I had everyone’s routine memorized. I knew when (Justin) Turner was going to fill out his crossword every day. I knew where Kershaw was in his pregame routine before he started. During the pandemic era, you really only get players on Zoom after the game, and you’re at the mercy of whoever the team brings to you. You can’t just grab who you want. But that’s what every sports journalist and broadcaster was going through everywhere. It was very strange.
But I will say that one thing about 2020 that was nice was the PR staff would say, “OK, we have Mookie (Betts) and J.T.” or “We have Kersh” or “We have (Max) Muncy,” and then those interviews would happen pretty quickly on Zoom after the games. We’re on the air for an hour after games end, and that can be a difficult hour to fill if no players are available to talk. That didn’t happen in 2020. In years past, sometimes I’d be in the locker room waiting for players to come to their lockers to be available to talk postgame, and an hour would pass and no one would show up. That’s because after games players go to eat or get treatment or basically hide from media. I do not miss standing around an empty clubhouse for 45 minutes waiting and waiting while our studio team desperately tries to fill the hour. But that’s not a Dodger-specific thing. Players just aren’t as accessible to media as they used to be.
I would talk to reporters who have been around for longer than me, like Ken Gurnick, Tim Brown, Bill Plunkett, and they would tell me back in the day they’d literally go have conversations with players when they were sitting in ice baths or in the trainer’s room. Now, we obviously don’t get that kind of access anymore. The players (in normal times) are only available to media when they are in front of their lockers, and they’ve got video rooms, quiet rooms, training rooms and dining rooms to go hang out in.
Now that you’re no longer employed by the Dodgers, are there any Dodgers players who you think you’ll still follow on a daily basis?
I’m a huge Justin Turner fan. I know he maybe almost signed somewhere else this past offseason, but I could not imagine him playing for another team. They don’t have captains in baseball, but he’s the captain of the Dodgers as far as I’m concerned, at least among the position players. In other ways, it’s Kershaw’s team.But Turner is quite a leader.
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He’s always been respectful of the job that I had to do, and he was always, always accountable after games. He would always answer questions, always made the time. Also, he was a non-roster invite during my first full year in 2014. I’ll never forget when he made the team, and I witnessed him telling his family in the parking lot at Camelback Ranch.
The other player would be Kershaw. Before I worked for the Dodgers, he won the Branch Rickey Award for community service, and I emceed the event. We kept in touch since then. He’s the ultimate competitor, so I’ll always follow his career and what he does.
No matter where I go next, I’ll always be a Dodger fan. The organization treated me with nothing but respect, and they were so good to me, always.
How hard of a decision was it to leave?
It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I was never gonna be ready to walk away from this job. What could be better than working for an organization where you feel respected and you get to cover the World Series champions? But the baseball season is 200 games a year. There’s no time for anything else. My fiancé is on the East Coast because he has two young children who live here, and he needs to be near them. It was just so hard to get our schedules to match up.
I’m very close to (Dodgers senior advisor) Ned Colletti, and we talked about this a lot. He said, “You need to worry about the people who are going to cry at your funeral.” And he’s right. The Dodgers were so good to me, but that’s my past now. My fiancé is my future, and as much as I loved my job, I love him more. I’m not retiring. I don’t want to get out of sports television. I just want to find something that’s compatible with being based on the East Coast.
I prioritized my personal life for once, and as sad as I am to leave Los Angeles, I knew for me it was the right thing to do.
(Photo of Alanna Rizzo and Justin Turner: Kirby Lee / USA Today)
