Worst Baseball Blog Names

Decided to start a fictitious log of worst baseball blog names. Feel free to add your own.

Assorted Ramblings

A Fan Speaks Out

Schilling Flat Out Belongs In the Hall

Astro Thoughts

Play Ball!

Nationals Recap

Random Musings

Bringin' Da Sox 24/7

Stats Here

Brad Callahan: First Year Law Student's Baseball Arguments

Marlin Blog

Vitaminpower@mlblogs.com

Gameday

Yankee Pride

My Fantasy League

The Wright Stuff

I Like Baseball and Have Tits

Fenway Fan For Life
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[Ed. 3/17/09]

HeathBell@mlblogs.com

Fantasy Trades I Rejected (2004-present)

Let's Play Two

Barry Bloom: Inside Bud's Colon

Dodger Blue

Thirtysomething Foul Ball Hawk!

Pujols Rocks

Dback Ticket Policy

Blue Jay Way

Met Jew

Muni Field Trip

After Monday's shuttle snafu, I made it to the Dbacks - A's exhibition today on the electrotrain, and have pictures of my day at Muni. But first, let's get any baseball news out of the way.

Conor Jackson hit a line drive as hard as you can, Mark Reynolds has shortened his stroke with two strikes and James Skelton, the Rule 5 C-IF pickup, who played second today, is really, really small. What does that mean? It means that Jackson is still the team's best hitter, which is not a particularly good thing; it means that Reynolds wont strike out more than 170 times, and it clarifies that Augie Ojeda is short - not small - and Skelton, like Augie, should be alot of fun to root for.

Haren walked three and Jesus Christ Q-perstar gave up a run. Who knows what that means. Jason Giambi and Matt Holliday both play for the A's now. That means the A's will score runs. If you care who "won" Thursday's exhibition, you're in the wrong place. ( OK, it was 6-1 Greenies).

First picture. The Poles! Supposedly shipped from New York's Polo Grounds, and considering the preseason Giants have called Arizona home since the fifties, it's probably true.



The Muni stadium website advertised $6 tickets, but the friendly lady behind the glass doesnt sell those (standing room) until every seat's sold, so I paid the $10 minimum to stand up most of the time anyway.

Next picture! Here's Arizona's new first baseman - Williams...I hear he's a great "clubhouse guy" and has a marvelous Floridian dentist. Incidentally, expand these pix (just click on each one), to fully appreciate.



The hackneyed shot of players warming up...zzz . Guy on the left is Marte, the Valverde look-alike.



Below is just prior to first pitch. Empty towards each foul pole, but a very respectable Thursday turnout. Muni is Metro's most centrally located field, so there was plenty of Dback red, holdover purple, and less Kelly green than usual - no doubt due to curtailed out of town travel. Fans typically arrive late here due to the ugly parking and logistics, and by the third or fourth inning, the park was close to full. I enjoy spring games more when it's not packed. The metal bleachers are always hot and there's more room to aerate or seek shade as needed. People seem to mellow out a bit too.



Here's my lunch, below. A showy husk of corn that you can take home and dry for the autumnal table. This was a plus - healthy, tasty, a little different and less than four bucks. Food prices came down a tad, drinks not so much. The $6 lemonade was $5.75, a hot dog $4.50 - hardly bargains, but at least they jettisoned the patently offensive $7 slice o pizza. Some of the beers were $8-$10 and a thing of Gatorade was $5. Pass.



Civilian Daron Sutton (black shirt, center right) held court, attached at the hip (or shoe) to some beefy handler in a red shirt. Sutton went to his mouth during the anthem and let's just say he enjoys a beer...it must be hell being famous.



The misleading Cactus League and Chamber of Commerce want you to know it was a beautiful 76 degrees, but that's in the shade. There are only a few shaded seats (Daron's section) -everyone else battles the sun.



This lady (seated, center) lost the battle, vomiting into a plastic bag. (WARNING: Expand this photo at your own risk. You can really see the vomit.) Lucky for her it was a balmy 76'. Kidding aside, this was my first spring game in some time where a fan didnt have a life threatening, heat related emergency. It's an increasing problem that baseball dreads talking about.



You cant see the game from here, but this is a nifty little shade area off the left field line, with picnic tables and green grass for the kids. I ate my corn here, under this tree. Several ants crawled up my ass. They were really small, even for ants, smaller than James Skelton, and I didnt know they were on me until they were basically up there.



That's about it.

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Song of the Day - I'll Take You There - Staple Singers

I Am Thirty-Third

In the humdrum scheme of things, gracefully gliding Gayle Sayers might've been Third, but in the brutally competitive, high stakes, ultimately ultimate MLBlog scheme of things, it has somehow crept into my wavering attention that: I Am Thirty-third! It's not every day one acquires such hard won national status without working at all or having sex with the right people. So this is huge for Diamondhacks and its joint and several subsidiaries, if any.

To question such humbling kudos seems impolite, at best, self-defeating at worst. So, since Diamondhacks built its curious standing as an impolite self-defeating juggernaut, please indulge our characteristically fussy inquiry, wont you?

How many viable fan blogs have developed under Mark Newman's stewardship entering his fifth year at the helm of MLBlogs? Well, there arent thirty three, I can tell you that. I'm 33rd in December traffic despite having not published a single in-season baseball post there...since 2007. Think about that for a second. Or a year or two, if necessary. The thirty-third most popular MLBlog is a dead blog, absent one post, one word, one syllable of fresh content for what has been, in the online world, a certifiable eternity.

Shouldnt one be forgiven for assuming that after hosting a blog network for four full seasons, MLBAM, with it's instantly iconic brand, enviable international scope, and a truly embarrassing array of propietary advantages - would've nurtured more than thirty fan blogs into viable destinations by now? I mean, hell, there's thirty teams for goodness sakes and there still may not even be a dozen fan blogs worth bookmarking within the entire North American MLB universe.

Even if Mark Newman was an incompetent drug addict who couldnt focus on his more obvious job responsibilities between fixes of heroin and viagra, and who deleted the plethora of blogs more popular than his own for kicks, wouldn't this sort of free, fan based network inside the hallowed mother ship just sort of inexorably take on a glorious life of its own, despite him?

Put another way, and with all due respect to our very talented, long suffering amigos at RSBS, Prince of New York, BPS and a handful of other places, is this alarming paucity of readable fan writing, under MLB auspices, even possible? My astonishment probably stems from a naive but dogged assumption that someone in MLB, someone higher than Newman, actually, ever, gave a whit about mlblogs, beyond a low cost web portal to drive Alyssa Milano's third world clothing sales.

In other words, the way - the only possible way - MLBlogs could have so utterly failed as a branded social network is not so much the result of incompetence or poor execution as it is the rotted fruits of disengaged contempt. Contempt for the mostly young writers who plug away for the love of it, as evidenced by MLB's scheduled dismantling of their proprietary printing press on Opening Day 2008, an amateurish disaster whose core malfunctions have still not been fixed nine months later.

And that is why we were stunned by a recent post from MLBlogs' chief, the aforementioned "Newman", where he actually delivers a sensible and well received list of practical tips for writers and a modicum of encouragment to his dwindling stable of scribes. Oh sure, his congenital premise of "I'm better than you" still comes through loud and clear, but at least here he's managed to relay some practical information to people beyond what a privilege it is to bask in His post marathon afterglow.

Congratulations, Mark. In four years of "running" MLBlogs (into the ground), it's your first remotely useful customer communication of any kind. Be sure to tag it!
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Song of the Day -Tell Me Something Good (Rufus, featuring Chaka Khan)

This Week's Hacks

For anyone wondering what MLB's doing with that $6 billion dollars of theirs, here's part of the answer - a $50 million TV mega studio, across the Hudson in relatively low rent Secaucus, where Harold Reynolds can shag right on the set! This unpleasant excess is surpassed only by Mark Newman's dutiful orgasm gushing over the pay cable facility. That, and the fact it's named 'in honor' of Jackie Robinson. Barf.

Raffy Furcal dodged the Braves to become a Dodger, and became something of a coward in Atlanta - home of the Braves. My head hurts.

Our Dbacks quietly released four scrubs - Robby Hammock, Chris Burke, Jeff Salazar and Will Ledezma - saving about $2 million towards 2009's incredible, shrinking payroll. Hammock was best known for catching Randy Johnson's 2004 perfecto and for sobbing after making the MLB roster out of camp last spring. Salazar made 2007's most memorable defensive play, soaring over Chase's right field fence to rob a homer. Chris Burke, acquired in the Jose Valverde dump, will be remembered as an unbelievably unproductive fill-in. I do not recall Will Ledezma.

Congratulations to Chandler Hamilton, Arizona's best high school football team, on winning their fourth 5A title in six years.To runner up Brophy, the best conditioned team in the state, which fought from a 1-3 September, and a 17-0 deficit in the championship to within a first down of stealing their third title in four years, we respectfully say: Hoka Hey.

On their way to the title tilt, Brophy also met Gilbert Highland, a school reeling from the sudden loss of band member Kelly Tracy. In the days prior to the game, Brophy students raised several thousand dollars to help defray funeral expenses. At the game, both teams entered the stadium somberly, hand in hand, eschewing the usual sprint through posterboard. In the third quarter, Brophy's small band met Highland's larger one, near an end zone and, in a show of solidarity, perfomed Highland's fight song together.

Two unsusual sights in the park near my house. After walking my dog hundreds of times past hundreds of jackrabbits, we saw our first fox; Gray Fox by name, more of a rust by actual color. Also, a homelsss man, in the undeveloped eastern ell of the park. He has a chair and quite a few belongings, and looks to be hunkered down for a while.

Getting a Christmas tree today. It will be a small one.

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Song of the Day - Hoka Hey

Strategy Pays Off

According to MLBlog's up to the minute traffic reports, hard charging Diamondhacks ranks thirtyfifth, out of hundreds and hundreds (conceivably thousands) of MLB-hosted fan blogs!

We're particularly proud of this showing, considering we abandoned MLBlogs in April, failing to take note of the most recent baseball season there. ( As some may recall, that online network boldly expanded its corporate vision last Opening Day, by removing all user fees, service and conceivable value.)

So, to be in the thick of an also ran's "standings", by not paying or writing anything, was ingeneous strategy. Diamondhacks earned our envious position by shrewdly withholding investment, and any effort whatsoever.

In related news, the Arizona Diamondbacks placed second in the National League West.

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Song of the Day - Be My Baby (The Ronettes)

Good Guys, Bad Gig

I didnt see this reported online, but after last night's game, in the clubhouse, Orlando Hudson went off on the fans for booing Eric Byrnes. He was about to be interviewed by Todd Walsh, and before Walsh asked him any game questions, Oh Dawg appeared to take it upon himself to volunteer his "disappointment" at the situation. As far as I could tell, this wasnt in response to a Walsh question, rather something Hudson really wanted to get off his chest.

He said "disappointed" three times. He said everybody has slumps. He shook his head and said "after everything he [Byrnes] gives to the team" and even included Eric's TV show in the "everything" that Byrnes gives fans.

In related news, Daron Sutton recently explained how Eric vounteered for an extra hour and a half of BP the other day. Sutton repeated the time commitment, for emphasis.

An hour and a half ! , he shreiked.

Why do I bring all this up? It's not to debate whether it's ok to boo Byrnes or to discuss his contract or prospects going forward. I mention these two anecdotes because, together, I think they serve to illustrate how systematically divorced the major league baseball enterprise has become from ordinary people who provide the lion's share of its support.

Take Hudson. He's visibly upset the fans are booing his friend. I can understand that. But understand this, Orlando. First, your friend is a professional ballplayer making $10M per year to entertain people - primarily via winning - and he's failing miserably at that commitment. Second, this is no ordinary slump. Forget the .103 BA in his last 58 at bats - Byrnes hasnt drawn a single walk since April 26th! He hits worse than a relief pitcher and looks it. He has hamstring problems but one cant watch his garbled approach without being convinced there's a mental apspect to this flailing - a lack of concentration, gameplan,etc. Third, fans arent always booing players as much as they're booing management's decision to field that particular player under given circumstances. That might not dry Eric's or Orlando's tears, but it's true.

Now let's take Sutton's remark about the extra BP. I'm confident Eric is trying to work out of his slump. But I ask you this. How many among us, those who make a tad less than $10M annually, have volunteered an hour and a half of our time to smooth over some rough edges at work in terms of our performance? I daresay virtually everybody trying to put food on the table. What bothered me about Sutton's remark was the breathlessness of it. It wasnt just to inform us that Eric was taking extra work, it was to impress us.

And it failed miserably. I wasnt there to gauge the nature of this extra BP, but to be fair, an hour and a half of straight BP is very tough. But to the larger point, so what? Should any working American really be impressed by this "news"?

Another reason I offer these anecdotes is because Byrnes and Hudson both have such terrific reputations dealing with fans. You virtually never hear a bad word about either and I have no reason to think either reputation is undeserved. This isnt Barry Bonds or any other infamous prima donna. OK, one could make the case for Byrnes, but he and Oh Dawg are good guys. I'm not gonna call 'em "great guys" cause that's overdone, but there's plenty of evidence they're reasonably grounded, likeable dudes.

Yet Hudson takes privileged umbrage that his $10M bunkmate is actually (Heavens to Betsy!) booooed! Apparently, fans who pay to be entertained dont have sufficient respect for the lucrative and expansive Eric Byrnes franchise, according to one Mr Hudson. And we're supposed to be satisfied, grateful even, that this 'professional' takes time out of his busy schedule whoring his personal franchise to bear at least cursory semblance to a major league hitter.

It's not the personalities here. These are both reasonably self-motivated, hard working guys. It's the incessant culture of hype and illusion bearing down on them. An industry that exalts players as superhuman and lifeless, mindless fans who reflexively let it happen. Maybe it's time that baseball fans, adult fans anyway, step back yet again and rethink who and what they're rooting for.

Win 2001 Series DVD (Collector's Edition Set) !!

Baseball. Bloggers. Everywhere.

Wanna win a seven DVD boxed set of, like, the greatest fall classic ever? I thought so. A set we charge $69 for that is coveted by eleven or twelve people without jobs? Ok, then. Welcome to how this works.

Since we're all proprietors, it only takes three E-Z steps to make the magic happen:

• First, email me a recent picture of yourself (jpg or bitmp, full length preferred, please no "renderings").

• Second, after your photo's "approved" by The Pros here at DAM (Diamondhacks Advanced Media), look for the confirmation email with travel and other instructions.

• Third, fix yourself up nice, glide by my cube here in lower Manhattan, and go down on my All-Star crank.

That's it! One, two, three strokes. You're in!!

Did I mention it's FREE?

Welcome to My World! Only here on Blogspot!

I know it sounds a little crazy, but it's crazier not to go along with the craziness, right?

Almost forgot. Seems to be a little misunderstanding around here. This site is for absolutely EVERYONE. Not just The Pros. EVERYONE coming out of the woodwork who cant live without baseball 24/7 with bells on. But this special benefit is only open to the ladies. The rest of you bloggers should be tagging. Tagging along to get ahead. You'll want to tag like hell.

So, you wanna **** a baseball writer?

--Matt/DAM

This Week's Hacks

All I remember about Jackie Robinson was 1972, when he died in a Connecticut suburb adjacent to ours. He was not a player I naturally warmed to, so old and serious, the ancient embodiment of adult injustice encroaching on my child's game. I remember Howard Cosell, somberly imparting what a monumental figure had left us. Cosell was, like me, from Brooklyn, and idolized ol' 42. The other thing I remember was how old Robinson looked, like a second term President. He was only fifty three.



It helps to be old, older than me, to really appreciate what Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey did way back in 1947, less than two years after U.S. troops (many still segregated) stood up against at least the principle of ethnic cleansing, and eight years before Rosa Parks actually parked her rear on the front of that Mongomery bus. Even the NBA was all white. For Rickey to pull this off, he had to be right, and smarter than everyone else - and he was. As for Robinson, I never saw him play. My father had, at Ebbets Field, and said he was very good - but not as great as Hornsby.

MLB released quite a banquet of feel good homilies to their sacrificial lion, but none more meaty than this wonderfully hamfisted political screed from Mike Bauman. Enjoy!

While the Mets plan to honor Robinson at their new park, sadder news at their old one, the latest in a line of violent incidents at Shea. I'd document the trend, but cant summon the energy to rummage through MLBlogs for old drafts at the moment.

Speaking of MlBlogs, it needs to be noted that I can now create a sidebar link on my old blog! Ta da! That only took seventeen days. Why, it should be World Series time before Mark's crackerjack team:

• restores link list order capability (other than alphabetical)



• restores order capability within a given list



• restores the Tooltip option, so sidebars arent cluttered with unwanted text



• restores Display/Dont Display capability on Link Lists, so that Lists in Draft Status dont automatically display.



• restores image, caption and layout specifications on all photo albums created



• restores html functionality to enable widget basics like Site Meters, Team Schedules, Weather Icons and customized color and font coding.

And that's just the sidebar, folks.


The Dbacks have opened up MLB's largest lead (3.5 g), after taking the last four series against the NL West. Tonight, Arizona would seem to be heavy favorites over Greg Maddux and his lazy lidded Padres, who lost earlier today in the longest (and perhaps dullest) MLB game since 1993. San Diego exhausted six relievers over fourteen innings, but baseball is a funny game. Just when everything's going your way...boom!

Speaking of which, a young cocky Dbacks "Acct Executive" called yesterday, trying to sell me season tickets. Poor guy.

This Week's Hacks (Summer Squash)

Within MLBlogs, the opening of the baseball season, remarkably, took a back seat to...MLBlogs itself, which compromised - and in many cases, squashed - basic functionality to several hundred paying customers - with no meaningful advance warning, nor tech support worth a damn. It would take eons to catalogue the layers of ineptitude discovered to date, spread across the Planning, Design, Build, Test and Rollout stages of this embarrassment (is MLBAM even familiar with these phases?), and that is not the purpose of this post.

To begin to understand where MLBlogs fits into MLB's heirarchy, this article, written by the golden fellow (at left) "in charge" of MLBlogs (left), is illuminating.

To begin to understand how bluntly MLB implements much higher profile projects, read this, or this (hat tip: Russell)

When things are this wrong, you cant just say, "It's all Newman's fault." Well you can, but it's a little like blaming the President for everything wrong in the country. There's truth in it, but the approach isnt wholly instructive either. What you can say is this. Or this. Or this. And every MLBlogger absolutely has to read this.(hat tip:Russell)

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The questions posed to Bill James in this extensive New York Times Q&A are unusually cogent, and his responses characteristically provocative. It may squash some popular notions about James, and I promise it'll wake up your brain in the process (hat tip:Nick Piecoro)

Finally, here's a handful of Phoenix restaurants I recently reviewed on the Yelp network. Bon apetit.

Hello Goodbye

If you've been redirected from my mlblogs site, Welcome! I sincerely appreciate the effort you've made to get here, and will try to make it worth your while.

Here you will find Diamondhacks goodness (is that an oxymoron?), while mlblogs scrambles to figure out how to get Alyssa Milano (and eventually, hundreds of zero priority blogs like mine) back online with something resembling post 2004 functionality.

How can you take seriously the customer service intentions of any organization that would roll out an entirely new software platform (as opposed to enhancements on an existing structure), on the eve of peak user interest - then instruct long time users to patiently partner through these self-imposed technical nightmares during the sport's historic Opening Weekend?

Nightmares? Well, they took my site completely down for sixty hours with absolutely no advance warning, even though this was obviously in the works for some time. When the blogs gradually came back up (I use "up" advisedly), there's no means by which a surfer can even find most blogs (icluding mine, of course), either through MLBlogs homepage, or through each other's blogs, because the sidebar functionality (where we've linked to each other for years) is currently inoperable on the new platform. So, after three years of networking and crosslinking on MLBlogs and building a small but loyal readership, the only way anyone can now find me on this grand network is by googling Diamondhacks, the same as if there was no network at all and if I had never blogged a word in my life.

If MLB is sincere in their stated intention to build a viable customer base of bloggers, let's be honest. In the real world, in any reasonably competitive business environment, clowns responsible for pulling the rug out from underneath the existing base in this fashion would be fired for gross incompetence. So either a) these clowns should be fired, b) MLB doesnt operate in the real world, or c) these stated intentions should be called into question.

To be clear, this isnt a reasonably competitive business environment - MLB, while hardly a monopoly, enjoys some embarassingly huge advantages in the baseball blogging world. That's a big reason I've stayed on through the horrendous customer service, in hopes MLB would eventually exploit those advantages to build a stronger network than the empty space between Alyssa Milano's boobs. And maybe someday they will. Maybe this is the start of that 'something big' we've hoped for and been led on for three years now. Where a lone voice (better ones have long since left) whose only inside connection is the internet hookup in my den, and who's fresh enough to occasionally be picked up by national publications, could maybe enjoy just a morsel (envision Alyssa Milano's pinky toenail ) of MLB's huge promotional promise.

At some point, months and months - indeed years - of non existent promotion and lousy customer service cant be separated from MLB's larger strategic intention to provide just that. I'll keep an eye on the new platform, but for now I'll prefer to be lied to as an outsider.

I'm so sick of talking about this garbage. Tomorrow is Opening Day and I'm going to talk about baseball. Somewhere. Anywhere.

Here.