• First thing first, as many of you know, I am a Rays season ticket holder. I go to every Friday game. Unfortunately, the Rays are 6-17 this year on Fridays. The fine gentlemen at DRaysBay examine what’s going wrong.
• Speaking of the Rays, there is a new Rays blog out there called “The Ray Area“. Always good to see more people write about the Rays, but I am not sure what the webmaster means when he said that other Rays blogs “often forget that baseball is supposed to be fun“. I can think of one site he might be referring to, but that’s not a good way to make friends.
• Pitchfork reviews the release of the 40th anniversary special release of Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew”. Hint for Christmas, y’all.
• Here is an old New York Mets Newsday pullout from 1986 that I think I still have somewhere. Hard to believe it was 24 years ago.
• I was curious who was supporting that nutjob preacher in Gainesville who wanted to burn Qu’rans. Apparently this group of rightwing zealots was backing him up. What a bunch of nutbars.
• Also in news, the number of foreign students enrolled in college in the US dropped for the first time in a long time. That’s not good. Not only are other countries providing an alternative, but that also means a loss of income for our colleges.
• From the random blogosphere comes a blog named “The Backpacking Ninja“, from a world traveler. Who may or may not flip out and kill people.
• A whole directory of random photos of Stormtroopers getting into craziness.
• In a galaxy not so far, far away, a  Chinese man is selling himself into slavery instead of having to give up his daughter to the one-child rule over there.

And yes, that is a bungee cord dress! Made with love by the Arthur J Bungee Memorial Fund.

P.S. The title of this post comes from Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

That makes three.

Of course, there is me and my crazy, Afro-Squad inspired ‘fro.

There is Miss Destructo, and her blue ‘do.

Today, I discovered another, the purple-haired Short Hair Diva of the aptly named shorthairdiva.com. Apparently she was also at the Tampa social media meet-up the other week. Unfortunately, although I took a pic with Miss Destructo, and The Shorthair Diva did pictures with Miss Destructo, we did not do a group pic.

Any idea why there are so many crazy hair bloggers in Tampa?

Is it the water?

Is it the heat?

I’ve written about DRaysBay before. For those that don’t know, they are the premier statistical analysis blog on the Tampa Bay Rays. Although I love their analysis and their work, I think they are the most condescending bunch of bloggers in the Tampa Bay blogosphere.

Back in December of 2008, I wrote about their inability to see baseball from the perspective of the common fan. I wrote that they had a “‘holier than thou’ attitude towards the casual fan”. I hoped maybe they would grow up and wake up to the fact that not every fan wants to be burdened with understanding advanced statistics. For some fans, if the team loses – no matter how great the players performed – it was a disappointing day at the ballpark.

I was highly encouraged and thought they were turning over a new leaf when I read this post about a game one of the writers attended with his little daughter. The writer even said he “rediscovered” the game.

Alas, my optimism was short lived. Not two months later, the DRaysBay writers retreated to their Ivory Tower, where “average” fans are not acknowledged.

(I know I am lumping them all together. FreeZorilla wrote the piece on the game with his daughter. The site has four or five other writers.)

My ire was once again provoked earlier this week, by this exclusionary comment by friend of the site, Jonah Keri. While writing about much maligned Rays outfielder BJ Upton, Keri told DRaysBay readers:

The big “news” tomorrow on mainstream sites will be about B.J. Upton being lazy or combative or a bad teammate or whatever other euphemism writers want to use. Don’t listen to any of it.

Doesn’t that sound condescending? Like Keri is some preacher telling his followers not to acknowledge the mindless ramblings of other sites. Keri and his truth will lead the way.

Then, only a few days later, R.J. Anderson commented about another post on the SBNation site written by fellow Tampa Bay blogger Clark Brooks.

I don’t really know who Clark Brooks is, but he says here he’s done defending B.J. Upton. I’m not. It’s easier to defend people when their performance is measured in every imaginable way and it’s not about page hits or links.

Well, RJ, I have met Clark. He seemed like a pretty normal guy. He is also quite funny, if you have ever read his work. Unfortunately, it’s easy to not know your fellow writers when you don’t show up to networking events

Do you know where I met Clark?

At a recent SBNation meet-up, where writers of the Tampa Bay sports sites were at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company to meet with each other and some of their readers. According to the post on the meet-up, writers from the Bucs site were there as well as writers from the Lightning site.

Where were the DRaysBay guys? Not there. Not one. I know some of them don’t live in the Tampa Bay area, and that’s understandable. But am I to believe one of the most popular Rays sites on the web has zero writers living in the Tampa Bay area? They even posted an invite on their site, although they failed to say they would be represented.

That’s poor. Or as the kids say, that’s a “FAIL”.

Maybe they have a collective problem with meeting the people who enjoy their work. Are they scared their readers will be obsessive groupies like the bloggers mentioned in this article about a recent sports blog convention?

As anyone who has met me before can attest, I am far from a writer groupie. If I like your work, I’ll tell you. If you like mine, I hope you’ll tell me as well. Maybe we can even take in a beer or two and talk shop. As most people who work in social media will attest, person-to-person relationships mean much more than any blog post or twitter conversation.

Therefore, in conclusion, Erik Hahmann, Tommy Rancel, RJ Anderson, and the rest of the DRaysBay crew, I am calling you out. I dare you to get out of your ivory tower, back away from the spreadsheets, and join me for a beer at the Trop sometime.

Using Cork’s example, every so often I am going to take a look back at what I wrote on my old site, The Serious Tip, on any particular day. For lack of a better term, I’m going to call them “flashbacks”. Of course, because I didn’t write everyday over there, I can only “flashback” on anniversaries of days I wrote something, unless I want to celebrate writing nothing. Sort of like an “un-birthday”.

Two years today for example, I wrote a post entitled “Hey, Wait, I’m Blogging Sports Complaints“.  Inspired by then-Deadspin.com editor and Nirvana fan Will Leitch, I compared many of the first generation of sports blogs to the grunge bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I postulated that both early sports blogs and grunge bands had similar do-it-yourself chutzpah and “revolutionary” tendencies as well as a desire to “stick it to” the way their interest (music/sports) was packaged by the mainstream.

Of course, after I sent the finished post to Will Leitch, he posted a link to The Serious Tip on Deadspin.com and my post was read by thousands of Deadspin readers, one of whom wrote possibly the best comment I ever received in nearly four years of blogging:

Anonymous said…

I think 99% of the time this blog sucks complete ass. This though, was spectacularly average.

So swing on by and check out one of my favorite posts from The Serious Tip:

Hey, Wait, I’m Blogging Sports Complaints

(Either that or I am full of crap. Because of course, I have never been the bee’s knees as a writer. Me writing about being a well-known-New-York-Times-Best-Selling-author would be like me writing about success in dating and relationships. There is no doubt I would be full of crap.)

The way I see it, the audience has three choices when encountering a piece of media:

1) Ignore - Simple enough. They can choose not to read it, watch it, listen it, whatever. They can skip the link, turn the channel, change the station, or skip the track. They do not partake and they do not care. Every writer starts off here. I remember the first article I ever wrote for the FSU student newspaper. I think only three people read it – me, my mother, and my college roommate, and he probably only read it to get out of buying beer that night.

(That article was terrible. I wrote about radiation and tried to tie it to checkout scanners at the university library. I asked the head of the library if students could become impotent because of the scanning devices. Seriously. On a positive note, it was the only article I ever wrote that was drastically edited. From then on, my editors barely changed anything.)

2) Absorb – Readers can lend an open ear to what you have to say. They can be passive participants. This is where old media stops. Writers today don’t want to be old media. They don’t want to talk at their audience. Even if the audience listens, if you want to be build loyalty and community, you should want one more step.

(Admittedly, this is where I struggle sometimes. Sometimes my academic leanings creep in to my writing and it becomes more informative than discussion-based. I’m working on better blending the two, both in online and in real-life conversations. Trust me, it’s tough to pick up girls at a bar when you overpower the conversation.)

3) Respond – This is the key to new media. This is the premise in which Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are built. But of course, you can’t have response without absorption. You want people to see and want to add. Writers today need to give fans that option. New media absorbers expect it. They feel a desire to participate. Anything else feels like too much like old media. That’s ok for a book – something with a good story, or something filled to the brim with new information.

But if you want to be successful online, you need to connect. Hit them where they care.

What do you guys think? Am I kinda close? Do those steps sound right? Or is my navel-gazing blinded by the belly button lint of ignorance?

(For more reading on blogging and how to be an online success, check out Matthew Cerrone’s blog. Matthew is the founder, editor, and principal writer of the successful MetsBlog.com and he knows his way around the web.)

Right from the start, Forbes discusses the difficulty of compiling their list. Their thought was that because ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Fox News, and regional sports sections provided ample coverage, then there was no reason for sports fans to blog. On top of that, there was “no economic incentive to start a sports blog”.  I guess for Forbes that’s all that counts.

Before I review their Top 5, here is perhaps my favorite line from Forbes’s intro:

“Pro football and basketball blogs are the worst of the bunch–the pickings are slim, the presentation is poor and the writing uninspired.”

Number 1: Badjocks.com

2003 Forbes description highlight: “a good-looking, fun and informative blog that offers a Kobe Watch, a tally of high school coach sex scandals and the main attraction, stories listed under the heading “Who Did Something Stupid Today?” With 3,000 daily visits, the site may feature a story on a gold medal Russian rhythmic gymnast who was arrested for cheating at cards, or a high school mascot waving the Confederate flag.”

2010 Follow up: Badjocks.com is still active and was recently named one of the most influential blogs of the decade by Sports Illustrated.

Number 2: Off Wing Opinion

2003 Forbes description highlights: “There’s very little sports news that Eric McErlain won’t take an opinionated whack at … The Reston, Va., resident supplies an impressively informed point of view on every topic he targets … he gets 200 to 300 visitors a day.”

2010 Follow-up: Currently located at the more convenient www.offwing.com, Off Wing Opinion is still active, although it is now apparently only updated once a week as McErlain has seized bigger and better media opportunities.

Number 3: FanBlogs.com

2003 Forbes description highlights: “Fanblogs.com is probably the best blog dedicated to a single sport–college football … Making Fanblogs profitable is not on the agenda, they say, though they would like to make enough to cover the costs of producing the site. The blog got an average 17,000 daily hits this month.”

2010 Follow-up: FanBlogs.com is still active and looks as popular as ever. In 2006, it was purchased by Rivals.com, which makes it a part of the extensive Yahoo! Sports network.

Number 4: F#%!edsports.com

2003 Forbes description highlights: “F#%!edsports.com is sports’ version of King Lear’s fool. Buddy Maguire comments on the day’s major scandals … Although he claims to have earned a whopping $8.05 from the site so far, it’s the grotesque, not the money, that fuels him.”

2010 Follow-up: I’m not sure what to think here. When I typed in “F#%!edsports.com there was no site. However, when I looked up “Buddy Maguire”, I found a site called FrostedSports.tv which has not been updated since October 2008. Either way, I’m going to say they are not active anymore. Maybe someone out there knows something different.

Number 5: Replacement Level Yankee Fan

2003 Forbes description highlight: “Larry Mahnken’s Replacement Level Yankees has a pretty, pinstriped design, in-depth opinions updated regularly and relevant stats … The site is slowly gaining popularity, drawing about 1,000 hits in May, 2,000 in June, 3,000 in July and 6,500 in August.”

2010 Follow-up: On April 2nd, 2007 Replacement Level Yankee Fan moved from its original location to www.replacementlevel.com. That web address however redirects to Revenge of the RLYW which picks up on March 15, 2008. It’s almost as if the Yankees didn’t exist for 11 months.

Overall, I have to give credit to these guys. Not only are they the forebearers of the sports blogging scene, but as a writer/blogger who has been on the scene for 3.5 years, I have to tip my cap to the writers at 4 out of 5 of these sites who continue to post quality material day in and day out.

Seven years is a long time. Great job, guys.

(Addendum: In 2004, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote an article on the growing sports blog scene. According to the P-I, at the time there were “322 blogs, with 267 dedicated to baseball. Some have become so popular, they are selling advertising.”)

Granted, they aren’t going to be pretty, but someone should find the answer to the questions: how many games did Charlie Brown’s team lose? how many did they win? how many times did Charlie Brown get knocked over by a line-drive? and so on…

And that he did. In Part 1, Granillo looked at every game from 1951 to 1960. Let’s just say the numbers aren’t good.

In Part 2, Granillo examines the Peanuts gang’s diamond exploits from 1961 to 1970. Charlie Brown and company get slightly better in their second decade, but not by much.

Admittedly, Granillo’s examination of Charlie Brown’s baseball stats may be overkill for some. Some might say analysis like that sucks the fun out of a light-hearted comic strip about and made for kids.

But like I said, I think it’s genius.

The Wezen-Ball – Charlie Brown post reminded me of another absolutely brilliant post on a baseball playing cartoon character. Back in 2006, Derek Zumsteg of the blog U.S.S. Mariner dissected the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon “Baseball Bugs“. Zumsteg, a noted baseball analyst, broke down Bugs’ performance on the field so thoroughly, he even calculated where and when Bugs uses super-rabbit skills. When describing Bugs’ ability to not only throw a pitch, but to race behind home plate and catch it, Zumsteg writes,

Therefore, he throws the pitch in the air at about 44mph and possibly quite slightly towards home. In the time the toss gives him behind the plate, he begins to chatter. In his three seconds of yelling, he’s able to cause the ball to accelerate extremely fast. We can estimate the speed of the ball given the force applied to Bugs while catching it. If, as seems reasonable, we figure he weighs 80lbs, the force to throw him directly into the backstop and do significant structural damage to that backstop can be estimated (“Estimation of pitch speed through re-creation of secondary observations using weighted mannequin and riot suppresion weapons,” Zumsteg, 2004). We are able to figure that the pitch was traveling at least 150mph and possibly much faster.

Needless to say, Zumsteg’s post is not for those who like to keep their humor and science separate.

Although Zumsteg’s and Granillo’s posts share similar subjects, they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Granillo wrote about 20 years of games in sweeping generalities littered with assumptions, Zumsteg had one game with a final score and recorded footage of performances, processes, and methodologies. Despite their differences, as a fan of baseball and of cartoons, I think they are two of the best sports blogs ever written.

Over at Rays Index, the almighty Professor gave a hearty thank you to his readers for year well done. According to the Prof, Rays Index received 1.1 million page views in 2009.

Over at MetsBlog.com, founder Matt Cerrone also wrote a year-end post and mentioned he was on pace for six million page views in December 2009.

(Interestingly, both sites said they had huge increases in readership over 2008′s totals, 40% for Rays Index and 80% for MetsBlog. Meanwhile, newspapers are going the way of the dodo. Oh, in case you are curious, my old site, TheSeriousTip.com, received only 250,000 hits in its 3 years of existence.)

If the numbers given by Cerrone and the Professor are correct, in one month MetsBlog.com received almost six times the amount of page views that Rays Index got for all of 2009 – that’s 72x the page views for the entire year.

Of course, there are some legit reasons for this. MetsBlog.com the flagship fan blog for a New York City-based team. New York City has well over 10 million people. That’s a lot of potential viewers in possibly the world’s biggest media market. Not to mention, MetsBlog.com is associated with SNY, New York’s newest sports and entertainment television network.

Then there is Cerrone’s fanbase. New York is one of the more online cities in the world. I would also venture a guess that many of Cerrone’s core readers are Met fans who became fans during the Mets glory years of the late ’80s and are currently early-30s, late-20s professionals leading the business world into the Internet age.

Rays Index, on the other hand, isn’t quite the flagship blog of Rays fans. Although there is a growing Rays blogosphere, there are two primary Rays fan blogs, Rays Index and the more statistical-based, stat geek-run DRaysBay. Rays Index is the more snarky, less-pretentious, more down-to-earth alternative. Personally, I read and am a fan of both.

(Disclaimer: I’ve met the bloggers from both sites. Whereas The Professor and I shot the breeze over a beer, the guys that write for DRaysBay had no interest in chatting as they were too busy shadowing (or was it sucking up to) Will Carroll of BaseballProspectus.com.)

Rays Index also caters to a much smaller market without the depth and fanbase legacy. The Tampa Bay Rays’ market, if you really stretch it, could include from Orlando to Sarasota to Tampa to St. Pete-Clearwater, and tops out at probably 5-6 million people. That’s half of MetsBlog’s guaranteed, local, direct market. From a legacy perspective, the Rays as a team also don’t have the history, of success or otherwise, that the Mets have, although I bet if you compare Rays Index’s page views from 2007 to the present, you will see a large increase (More than MetsBlog’s 80% increase? Tough call.). And finally, to my knowledge, Rays Index doesn’t have a partnership with a major entertainment company.

I’m not sure why I just wrote nearly 500 words comparing the page views of a major market flagship fan blog with a fan blog in a minor market. I guess the fact that one receives 72x the annual hits of the other blew me away.

Just over 100 days ago, we buried Thunder Matt’s Saloon. Although it’s rotting carcass quivered on for several days, what was once a prosperous, blossoming community of thought and literary insight had turned into a decrepit, shallow shell of a site, frequented only by the desperate and desolate.

Yet today, in the wake of the closing of Pomp Culture, we celebrate the revival of Thunder Matt’s Saloon.

Although I am normally more accustomed to issuing final rights, I have perused the annals of the great voodoo priests, shaken the bones, and smoked the magical herb. I cannot guarantee this site will be as alive and vibrant as it once was, but it will emerge from the flotsam and jetsam of the blogosphere to live once again.

So rise, Thunder Matt’s Saloon! Rise from the ashes of your neglected ownership! Rise to conquer the throes of trivia and miscellanea! Rise to eat the flesh of pompous imitators who would dare relegate you to obscurity!

We have all seen the results of horror pictures and read the tales of the living dead. It is my hope to bring to you, loyal servant of the Thunder Congregation, a loyal bastion of a blog that not only lives forevermore in our hearts, but also grows past its former self. A site that will not only stimulate your mind but also your loins. One more fit than a fast food queen from Queens, more fertile than the octuplet mother of nine.

So now we ask of you, Maker of all things made, Endower of all things well-endowed, please grant Thunder Matt’s Saloon the willingness to live again, the wantonness to grow beyond what it once was, and wisdom need to not to let its owners decide to pull the rug out from under it and experiment with other sites again.

Long live Thunder Matt’s Saloon.

We are gathered here today to bury Thunder Matt’s Saloon. Thunder Matt’s Saloon now joins the rest of the blogosphere space trash, floating among the thousands of blogs that have been discarded, neglected, or killed off. Yet we still mourn.

To many, Thunder Matt’s Saloon will stand as a monument of accomplishment, a testament to the creative powers of a cabal of writers linked by the love of a Red-Headed Messiah. They brought new ideas, fresh topics, and a perspective rarely seen among the cacophony of voices in the blogosphere.

Sadly, the creative genius behind Thunder Matt’s Saloon deteriorated with the vanquishment of the Red-Headed Hero. When the promise of potential was packaged to the Pacific, the point of positive percolation peaked and perfidiousness became periodic. The mojo and the ability to rally around one common denominator was gone. They were all they had.

Yet still the core of Thunder Matt’s Saloon pressed on. In a move reminiscent of Poochie, they added voices from around the world, much to the chagrin of their fanbase. By the time the dust settled, the love Thunder Matt’s Saloon received was the love that was saved. The writing was on the wall and the end was nigh.

Although well-known in some circles, the reign of Thunder Matt’s Saloon had run its course. So although many throughout the blogosphere have opted for blog suicide (yay!) and the idea of sabotaging the reader base until nary a soul remembers the glory, we bury Thunder Matt’s Saloon on top, like a heroic cowboy riding in the setting sun. So pour out a little liquor, whether it be Night Train or champagne. Thunder Matt’s Saloon, may you rest in peace.

Thunder Matt’s Saloon is dead. Long live Pomp Culture.