Blogger Mania

Legendary wit Rocky Bridges once said, "There are three things the average man thinks he can do better than anybody else: build a fire, run a hotel, and manage a baseball team." Add write a baseball blog to that list.

The number of blogs devoted to the summer game continues to soar at a staggering rate. On Baseballblogs.org, a subset of Sportblogs.org, a check of the listings of blogs by team, hardly an exhaustive sorting on this site by any means, reveals 51 blogs devoted to the Boston Red Sox, 47 to the Cubs, and 32 to the Mets, etc..

Some blogs are long on opinion and short on facts. Others seem devoted to listing transactions such as who was designated for assignment, released outright, traded for a player to be named later, or obligated to pay palimony. There are blogs recapitulating the prior day’s games, others that call for the head of such-and-such manager, still others that opine on the state of the game itself.

Generally, the writing is of a high caliber, the language overwhelmingly rated G, and knowledge of the game impressive. Many writers link other baseball-oriented blogs to their own in a real show of fellowship.

Postings, which always carry a time stamp (the zone varies depending on the section of the country from which the blog originates), suggest that while every currently employed author has kept his or her day job, at least some of them are taking time out (theirs or the boss’s) during work to write, post and read the day’s fare.

The sheer quantity of words expended suggests the fan base for baseball may be far larger and more loyal than many observers previously suspected. Whether or not it also reinforces a major distinction between baseball and all other sports remains to be seen as blog mania extends into the football season. The ability to reconstruct games remains much more suited to baseball than football given the formers’ dimensions of time and space. Such a level of detail and recollection may inspire more fans to come forth with written opinions. Baseball also presents more trading opportunities throughout its season than other sports (the July 31 deadline inspired thousands of postings) prompting more authors to take to their keyboards.

The blog phenomenon may yet peter out but one thing remains abundantly clear: fellow fans, we obviously have a lot on our minds.