The ace and the archives
A dozen or so days ago, I got a note from my friend Tim Britton, the outstanding baseball writer for the Providence Journal. He mentioned he was putting together a year-end roundup of the best Red Sox writing from 2015 and asked if I had anything I’d like to contribute.
I was flattered, and mentioned a longer piece I wrote in which I talked at length with Pedro Martinez about his performance in Game 5 of the 1999 ALDS against the Indians. I was satisfied by that piece mostly because Pedro was his usual candid and charismatic self. It was fulfilling because of him rather than anything I had to do with it, but hey, I got the byline. Might as well take the credit.
Beyond that, I couldn’t think of anything else – I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, you know? – so I told Tim that I’d check my archives and see if there was anything else I was proud of. When I went to check the archives, I remembered something else:
I don’t have an archive!
You see, when Boston.com went through a redesign a year or so ago, we moved away from a blog model and began writing everything as a separate article. I was cool with it – I felt like I had the best sports writing job in Boston. I still do. But in retrospect, I don’t think I recognized at the time that some things would be lost that I’d miss. Further, some readers have missed me, even though I’m in the same spot I’ve ever been. That’s extraordinarily frustrating, especially for someone who doesn’t traffic in hot takes and depends on mutual trust with the readers.
A few hundred thousand of you came to the direct link for the blog each year, just checking to see if I’d written anything. Some of them have struggled to find my stuff since then – I still hear from a few per week, asking if I’ve written anything lately when I had a column posted that morning, and the morning before too. While there is a landing page on Boston.com as well as a Facebook page where I try to post everything, it’s not quite the same.
I’d noticed a few writers far more prominent than me – such as Dan Wetzel, the outstanding Yahoo! Sports columnist – using outlets like Tumblr to enhance their visibility for their real jobs.
So I figure: Why not? I’m not going to use this to write anything new beyond my Boston.com and Globe work; that would seem rather counterproductive. But I will use it as a way to point you to my stuff there every day – seriously, I write 5-6 times a week! I’m still here, or there! – while letting this build up as my unofficial archive.
It’s also an excuse to post some completely random baseball cards, a staple of the old format and something that I could no longer make work under our new content management system.
I need to find a way to revive the chats, too. Maybe this will be how it happens.
In the meantime, find me here – bookmark it, please, or however that works these days – and I’ll remind you how to find me there.
Below, I’ve seeded this sucker with a few posts from last year. Thanks, as always, for reading.
One of the better writers in the biz now has his work archived here on Tumblr. Follow. Trust. (also, when/if reblogging him, always add the tag, "when is your Friday chat coming back?". Gracias, semi-retired management.)
