Blast from the Past

Blogger provides a decent stats section in the Administrative interface.  I'm not getting many hits after a decade long absence from blogging, but it's still interesting to see where the few I am getting are coming from.

I was somewhat surprised to see the single hit that came in from a link on metsfanbook.com.  The Mets Fan book site was the web site for the late, great Dana Brand's first book.  Dana, who tragically passed away in 2011, was a truly great guy. Smart, friendly, generous, truly one of the good guys.  Getting to know him as a fellow blogger friend was one of the great perks of all that time I spent in the heyday of my blog.

And My Rose Goes To...

A few years ago, I tried to watch the season premiere episode of The Bachelor in a futile attempt to understand what all of the fuss was about. I don't think I made it through 10 minutes; it just wasn't for me. It's all good. The show has managed to do just fine without my support.

The cultural impact of The Bachelor is such that I have an understanding of the mechanism of the show that goes beyond what I could have learned in those few brief minutes spent watching. I learned more about the show through conversations and the memes and parodies that proliferate across the internet.

Spring Interrupted

If it weren't for the uwanted arrival of Coronavirus, we would be watching Mets games that counted by now. We're not only not watching games now, but there's a real chance that 2020 might come and go without a single regular season game being played at all.

I managed to make it through the first 10 years of my life without baseball having much more of an impact on my life than an occasional game of catch. But that year the magical 1969 Mets stole my heart, and baseball has been an integral part of my existence ever since.

Back to Basics

Writing every day on a blog in the first time in more than a decade brings back memories of starting the original blog 15 years ago. Despite being much older and at a very different place in my life there are some similarities, too. This time around it is a virus outbreak that has given me a little too much time on my hands, back then it was my own personal struggles with Lyme Disease.

I've always enjoyed writing. It grew out of a love for reading, which grew out of the realities of entertainment options in my youth. There was one tv in the house, dominated by my grandfather who paid all of the bills. His idea of entertainment was getting drunk on cheap beer or wine while watching the Merv Griffin show for 2 prime time hours so he could swear at the "celebrities" being interviewed who he decided he didn't like.

The Future: So Many Questions, So Few Answers

Joel Sherman has a good piece up on the New York Post's site about the new agreement between the players and owners and the questions over how any potential salvaged 2020 season might play out.

I'm still personally quite skeptical that we're going to get to a point in the next few months where thousands of people are going to be allowed to congregate in the packed, sweaty confines of a baseball stadium to watch a game.  That thought depresses me greatly, and I hope that I'm wrong.  It would mean the world to me to watch some real live baseball this year.

One Door Closes

I'm taking baby steps right now with this blog.  On Monday I canceled my old blog hosting and did some research on what it would take to move the blog here.  Tuesday I set up the blog, spent quite a bit of time to get my domain name to point here, and made my first post.  I'm learning this platform and making some tweaks to stuff as I go along.  Frankly, if I knew that Blogger had become this good I would have made the change years ago.

A Little Housekeeping

I'll be back with a regular post a bit later, but I wanted to take a minute to thank both Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing and Mack's Mets for the shout outs yesterday.  Greg linked to me on Twitter and John From Albany linked on the Mets Breakfast Link page.

I'll probably work on things to build up the readership at some point.  It's just more fun to write when a few people are actually reading it. For the time being I'm still figuring stuff out.  I appreciate (and am honored by) any links or promotion anyone chooses to give me, and when I find out about it I will always try to reciprocate.  I've added a Blogs We Like page to the site for that purpose.  If you want to exchange links let me know and I will happily do so as long as the site doesn't contain adult content or hate speech.

Another Day in Paradise

After moving this blog and bringing it back to life yesterday I'm faced with the task of what to do now.  This blog is still going to be a New York Mets fan blog going forward. For now, however, with the baseball season a casualty of the virus that put me out of work I don't want to be just another voice rehashing the few pieces of Mets news that are floating around out there, Others, frankly, do it much better anyway.

Everything Old is New Again

It was 15 years ago that I contracted Lyme Disease.  I wasn't able to work and was looking for something to do with my time.  I was a New York Mets fans who liked to read, and was disenchanted with the vast majority of coverage in all of the many local dailies that covered the team.  I found myself drawn to a relatively new phenomenon, the blogs published by fans of the team who were able to reach out across the internet and speak directly to other fans.