The State of the Blog 2017

So.  Quick question.  What’s been more active over the winter, this blog or the Baltimore Orioles front office?

The answer.

It’s a tie.

Now that we have the snarky opening out of the way, happy 2017 to all of those readers that I still have left.  Sorry to have left you all. I know you’ve missed the random, grammatically-challenged postings about hockey, trading cards and baseball.  No, really there was at least one baseball post last year (well, kind of about baseball)!

The good news is that there should be more baseball stuff this year.  I’m still writing about hockey over at Raw Charge, and  I don’t see that stopping for at least the next 89 days since I managed to talk myself into a marathon writing project (job security, baby!).  You’ll see an occasional link here when I managed to convince them that hockey cards and memorabilia are interesting to our readers.

As for the overall state of this blog, I am going to try and post at least weekly, more so once I finish binge watching Gilmore Girls (don’t judge me!) and it’s going to be a mix of things sports and randomness.  There may be some politics thrown in there as well.  I’m torn between the feeling that Mr. Trump is the worse person ever elected to be president of this country and the sense that he will be so ineffective once he pisses off everyone in Washington that it’s not worth even worrying about.  Of course, he could also be the one that brings actual nuclear war into being, but if that happens I really don’t have to care about upsetting readers now do I?

Speaking of readers, 2016 was the busiest year for this blog, despite the fact that I posted almost nothing during the last three months.  At the beginning of the year I always like to take a look and see what is garnering traffic.  Lately not much, but that’s on me.  I do love the fact that the leading search for my site is still: “Sidney Crosby shirtless”.  So thank you for that.

He’s also the recipient of the most popular postwhere I wrote about his return from one of his concussions. (Wow, great job by me with Tebow, Baltimore hero Dave Johnson and BizNasty2.0 references).  While it’s the most popular one, my favorite remains the one I wrote about Matt Cooke and Vinny Lecavalier.  Unfortunately, five years later I have to conclude that Vinny was never the same player after the surgery so yeah, I guess Cooke did destroy his career.

Looking back at some of those posts I wonder if I’ve gotten any better as a write.  I’m not sure I have.  I have become better about editing, not perfect but better.  I’ve found that when I write a lot or I write about stuff that I feel I “have” to write about it loses a little umph.  There are dozens of post that I wish I could re-write and erase the original from the digital world.  Even now with the Raw Charge stuff, every time I hit “submit for approval” I’m waiting for my editor to delete everything and curse me out.  (luckily it hasn’t happened yet).

I also notice that I use the phrase “unfortunately” a lot to start sentences.  Maybe it’s because I’ve had to write about a lot of bad teams over the years.  There are other crutches that I notice when I re-read old posts, but, hey I’m lazy and proud of it.

I am thankful for a lot of things that this blog has brought about.  First of all, the fact that it led to writing for Raw Charge, an actual real-life, site that people outside of my immediate family read.  So many thanks to John Fontana for offering me a chance and to Achairya for keeping me aboard after the regime change.

That promotion led me to an actual real life press pass for a professional sports team.  Granted the team is 2 hours away and I don’t get over there enough to truly take advantage of it, but it’s nice to know that this untrained, hack of a blogger was actually accepted into a press box.

Although my work schedule doesn’t allow me to cover it anymore, getting ringside press passes for local boxing events was awesome.  Being an accredited writer was never something I’d thought I’d be even when I was writing for the Saint Leo Monarch (#MonarchForever) back in college.

Many thanks to J.B. over at the Sports Card Blogroll for keeping me on the rolls even though I barely posted lately and when I did, most of the posts were not even about Sports Cards.  JB does a yeoman’s job of compiling the best writers about the hobby, please visit the site to find more bloggers that do a better job then a do talking about pieces of cardboard.

Also, for all of the people/readers I’ve met through this blog, thank you for the good times (and free hockey cards).  Y’all have been so kind over the years and I’m in debt to all of you.

Wow, this got to sounding like a farewell somehow.  This blog is not going anywhere.  Hopefully 2017 is as much fun in the sports world as 2016 was (could use a few less deaths, though). See you folks out there on the internets.