Alumni
Home Run
by Deirdre Kelly
Patricia Dawn Robertson (BA ’90) didn’t ask for a front-row seat to Canadian sports history, but she’s got the punchlines to prove she was there. Her recently published memoir, Media Brat: A Gen-X Memoir, turns the press box into a stage for sharp observational comedy, equal parts affection and absurdism, where newspaper deadlines and locker room legends invade family life.
Growing up in Toronto as the daughter of John Robertson – long-time Blue Jays and baseball columnist for the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star – Robertson spins coming-of-age stories thick with inside jokes. Sunshine Girls made more in a weekend than she did typing address labels. Her mother doubled as an on-call guidance counsellor, and spring training in Dunedin meant enduring both rookie pitchers and the politics of who got the best condo bedroom.
When she joined a newspaper herself, she found she was continually swinging at barbs.
“Can you write like your father?” her bosses repeatedly asked her.
Robertson couldn’t. Then again, she didn’t want to.
She wanted to forge her voice in print and so attended York University, where she hit her stride, majoring in English and women’s studies. York is where she sharpened the lively edge that runs through her book. “My time at York was immersive and generative,” she says, adding that the University is in one of her chapters. “I learned critical thinking skills, which I still prize.”
Today, living in Saskatchewan as a writer and editor, Robertson uses her satirical lens to target everything from newsroom fashion headlines to the cliques of sports wives, never missing the moment to determine who is really calling the shots. It’s smart, irreverent writing with the quirks and detours left in, from bad coat-check tips to being roasted by Dominican League all-stars for having the wrong last name.
The final score? Media Brat doesn’t pitch for heroics. It’s a love letter to the sidelines, a no man’s land reserved for awkward daughters, press passes, inside-baseball family drama and the art of observing the action from just outside the infield. ■
