“Anytime I saw a Maureen Mullen byline I always read the story. Grant knew Maureen and had been following her career. Ted Grant, a former editor, organized a group of local investors who bought the paper in September. Last year, after 137 years of ownership by the same family, the Daily Item of Lynn went up for sale. 'I covered Little League opening days, too! I always put that on my resume: 'From Little League opening days to World Series games.' Oh, yeah, I’ve never thought of myself as too big for those things.' The same family owned the Item for 137 years but sold it to local investors in 2014. Mullen remembers delivering the Daily Item's 100th anniversary edition in 1977 (shown next to a recent paper). Writing about the major leagues and covering a couple of World Series didn’t keep Maureen from taking smaller assignments over the past 15 years, including a few for the Lynn Daily Item. 'He knew that I would handle it in the right way and I wasn’t going to sensationalize the story.'īig League Credentials, Small Town Stories I’m trying to be professional and not cry and I’ve got tears in my eyes. He pulls a t-shirt out of his locker and he’s wiping his eyes with it. 'As he’s telling me the story, he’s crying. 'David got a call telling him that the solider had just been killed in Iraq,' she said, choking up at the memory. Ortiz hadn’t heard anything more until that morning at spring training. The soldier who was very young, early 20s, said to him, 'OK, hit a home run for me today.' And David says, 'Well, I don’t know if I can do that, but I’ll try.' And not only was it a home run. 'Somehow he got connected to a solider from New Hampshire who was going off to Iraq. He wanted to tell her a story about a man he’d met at Fenway the previous summer. In 2007, during spring training in Florida, Boston designated hitter David Ortiz called Maureen over to his locker. She built relationships and her reputation grew. That's when she thought, “Life is too short to not be enjoying your work.”īack in Massachusetts, Maureen started calling sports editors and they started giving her assignments as a reporter.īefore long, Maureen became a regular in the press box at Boston’s Fenway Park, writing about baseball for the Boston Globe, USA Today, MLB.com and more. Maureen interned at the Daily Item during college in the 1980s, but her professional life didn’t begin at a newspaper. Well, I’m applying now for my senior year,’' she said, laughing. And the guidance counselor said, 'No, it’s only for seniors.' So I said, ‘All right. “I actually applied to do that as a junior. Every year, the paper selected some students to write a weekly column. But she was just as passionate about getting a byline in the Daily Item. She ran cross country and track, played baseball and fought to get a girls soccer team at Lynn English High School. When I was delivering the papers, I would pull a paper out of my bag going from house to house,' she said.Ī Love Of Sports And Writing The Daily Item's former home in Lynn, Mass. 'I still think my interest in news goes back to that. We laughed about trudging around on cold winter days. We met on a beautiful, sunny afternoon that would have been a great day to deliver papers. Maureen is one of four children and the paper route was passed down from one kid to the next. It’s the first time I’ve really been back since my father sold the house almost a year ago. But it is a little bittersweet being back. If you ever wanted a game or anything, all you had to do was walk out your front door and there were tons of kids to play with. 'My parents bought the house, I guess in 1965, and it was supposed to be their starter house, but was such a great neighborhood, they ended up staying there,' she said. 'I always put that on my resume: 'From Little League opening days to World Series games.'' Maureen Mullen To this day, I can still remember the details of the route: the houses, the staircases I had to climb, people who took a few weeks to pay their bills. My route paid for a new bike and my first computer – a then state-of-the-art Apple II-C. It was my first job, and for a 10-year-old, it was good money. When I was about 10 years old, I got a paper route and delivered the Bergen Record. (Doug Tribou/Only A Game)įor most of the 1980s my family lived in the suburban town of Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Facebook Email After covering Major League Baseball for years, Maureen Mullen is back at work for the same paper she delivered as a kid.

Lynn daily item newspaper