PI column and hate mail o’ the day
Sooooo… No, I haven’t been linking to the PI pieces I’ve been writing (here’s the last one on the bullpen). This is going to sound weird, but it’s been a lot of stuff I’ve written about here, but mostly I’m working out how to write for them, so as astute readers have noticed, it’s not a voice I’m comfortable with, and there’s been a lot of editing (side note: if you’ve got ideas, comments, except to mention Mateo didn’t make the cut, please — email me, I’d love to hear about how to make that format work better). I’m sort of used to working with Jonah @ BP, where the conversations for my column went–
Me: “So I’m thinking about writing about x, y, or z.”
Jonah: “Ooooh, Y. Definately. And talk about this other thing.”
Me: “Heeey, yeah.”
Then I’d see if I could crank something out. And sometimes Jonah would reject it, or we’d go back and forth and finally get to something good. That took years. I’m sort of.. trying to force it.
But anyway, to my point about not linking. It’s also sort of a trial thing, and I didn’t want our readership causing the PI mail servers to catch fire and fall over with email. I mean, I love everyone, but fired up readers got the M’s to apologize, in public, for something, which is like the mountain bowing to the wind. Anyway, so this new audience… duuuude. Check this out.
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Happy New Year’s
Since Dave did the holiday wish, I’ll go ahead and say my New Year’s bit.
I love this site. Almost universally, I love the people who read this site. I have been continually impressed with the quality and quantity of people who read. When we have site outages, I’m going down the list of support contacts and giving them an earful because I know there are people out there that want to read about the Mariners, or baseball, or whatever I’m whining about that day, and I don’t want to disappoint them.
I may whine about the comments, sure. But we rule with a pretty light hand considering the volume of posts and readers. I hope almost everyone would agree with me that the USSM crowd engages in debate that’s both interesting and civil, where any view’s respected as long as you keep the swearing and insults out of it.
I hope in this next year we’ll continue to grow as fast as we have since we launched. I think the Mariners fan base is one of the smartest in baseball, and I want to serve them well. As always, if you have ideas for how we can get better, or story topics, or random thoughts, we’re happy to hear from you.
Derek
Sonics hire Statistical Analyst
Okay, two consecutive non-Mariner related posts. I promise my next one will have to do with baseball.
The P-I has an article today on the Sonics hiring of Dean Oliver, one of the more prominant statistical analysts of the NBA. I do find it interesting how the NBA has been much more friendly to “math geek” analysts who never played the game than MLB has.
Who are these people?
All the really long posts I’ve been working on aren’t ready yet, and I have nothing insightful to add but don’t want to feel like I’m neglecting the blog, so I’m going to take a cue from Derek and post something completely irrelevant to the Mariners.
Julia Cousineau of Tacoma created a system “more complex than an astrological chart” to avoid this most egregious of regifting faux pas.
Using a spreadsheet, she logged gifts she received by noting who gave it to her, for what occasion — and who else might enjoy getting it.
Seriously, who are these people? Ms. Cousineau gets so many gifts that she needs a spreadsheet to keep track of who gave her what? Apparently, I need new friends.
Cousineau, who works as an auditor at a leasing company, said none of her friends have caught on.
If the goal is to make sure your friends don’t catch on, then you may not want to give attributable quotes to the largest daily newspaper in the city. Just a thought.
Check the gift for telltale signs of regifting. Is there an inscription on the flyleaf of a book? Your wedding date engraved on the bottom of a vase? A long-past expiration date on a box of treats?
Seriously, is anyone out there really giving friends a “box of treats with a long-past expiration date”? Is this something we really need to warn people not to do? And hey, while your at it, stop offering people sour milk when they come over for breakfast…
Regifting, by the way, gets Dave’s Official Endorsement.
Plug for the 2005 Fred Hutchinson Lunch
A brief charity plug for the Fred Hutchinson Luncheon January 19th. Good cause, you get to hang out at Safeco, so if you’ve got $150 left over from the holidays, check it out. Here’s the writeup Mr. Bregel sent us:
[Update: Trevor Hoffman won]
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[The Fred Hutchinson Award] is one of the premier awards given out each year outside of those awarded by the MLB for an active player. I have included the list of winners of the award at the bottom of the mail so you can see just how amazing the list of recipients has been including 11 members of the Hall of Fame, 9 World Series MVPs, & 12 league MVPs. The luncheon itself is great. It is held out on the field in left field at Safeco Field. This year is the 40th anniversary of the award and many of the previous winners are expected to be in attendance. If you like to collect autographs here is a great opportunity to do so. The luncheon also includes a great auction.
Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Time: 11:30-1:30 pm
Location: Safeco Field, Seattle, WA
Cost: Suggested minimum donation of $150 ($85 FMV)
Proceeds of the 2005 Hutch Award Luncheon will benefit Fred Hutchinson’s Gregory Fund for early cancer detection research. Fred Hutchinson is an independent, non-profit research institution dedicated to the understanding, treatment and prevention of cancer and other potentially fatal diseases.
Downtown Wi-Fi and Food
I’m in need of a suggestion. I’m going to need a couple of places downtown to spend Thursday and Friday working via VPN using my wireless laptop. I’ve checked out Wi-Fi Freespot and WifiMug, but it’s hard to tell how comfortable these places are or how well they’d put up with me hanging out there for 6-8 hours.
So, if you’ve got some recommendations for somewhere downtown with free wireless access, decent food in close proximity (if it’s a coffee shop, a solid not-too-expensive eatery nearby), preferably with an outlet available to the public, I’d love to know about it. I’m going to the Sonics game Friday night, so perhaps one in the general area of Key Arena for that day might work out best. Oh, and parking would be a bonus, but I’m probably pushing my luck there.
And, since I’m asking, anyone know if they allow backpacks in the Key, or am I going to have to find somewhere to stick it during the game?
Remember me?
I was saddened to read in the comments today that “Derek and Dave do a great job” here at the good ship USS Mariner. Not because I disagree — on the contrary, I think they do a great job — but because I realized it’s been so long since I posted regularly that we probably have a number of new readers who don’t even know I’m a writer here. Sigh.
All of which is to say… I’m working on it. In another week I should be finished living out of a suitcase, as I have been the last few weeks. My work schedule is working toward regularity. And my son (who turned four months old today, incidentally), while still a full-time job and then some, doesn’t take quite as much time as he used to and even occasionally sleeps for extended periods of time.
In any event, I haven’t forgotten about you guys (and gals), the great readers who make this whole thing go. There will be an updated Big Board before the end of the year, and I’ll be at the second annual USSM Pizza Feed next month in case some of you really don’t believe I exist. If that describes you, don’t feel bad. I have to send Derek and Dave email sometimes to let them know I’m not dead.
In the meantime, I suggest we all sit back and wait for the M’s to screw up their off-season once again. But hey, how about those Sonics?
Many unanswered questions
Despite being sick as a dog this last week, I beat Halo 2 before the release of Halflife 2.
As much as I enjoyed Halo, and I like that Bungie creates huge, rich story lines, Halo 2 didn’t answer any of my questions about what’s going on from that game, and managed to confuse me even more. There’s a certain amount of mystery I appreciate, but at this point in the series, I feel like I should know much more about the fictional world and what’s going on than I do.
The Year in U.S.S. Mariner
I’m not sure if we’re going to do Official Endorsements this year or not, (probably, if they can be funny enough), but I wanted to talk a little about where we are and what’s ahead.
This year, we remodeled and moved to new digs. This meant new functionality and a huge upgrade in reliability over blogger, both on your side on ours. It also means I get a lot more frustrated when it doesn’t work, but it’s worth recognizing that the state of things is far better than it was.
Which brings us to another point. I don’t do a lot of trumpeting our traffic statistics, but we’re reaching a huge number of people for being a modest, three-person, team-specific site that doesn’t pay for bandwith or hosting with ad or subscription revenues. Our traffic’s a rounding error compared to, say, ESPN, but every year twice as many people visit us daily. I frequently think we’ve reached the ceiling, and then a week later more people keep coming.
I’m not sure how we reach out to people who haven’t seen us, but I’d love to know. I want the Mariners fan base to be the most informed and active in all of baseball, and if that means I have to go door-to-door, well, I’m too lazy to do that. But I had you go going there for a second.
It’s my hope that if we continue to try our best to provide quality commentary and analysis, and to above all strive to get things right, even if it means we turn out to be wrong, we’ll keep winning readers and everything will work itself out.
This year we turned on comments, and I’ve been constantly impressed with the quality and civility of discussion at large. I like to think that this is due largely to the quality of our readership, which is amazingly cool, and a little to do with me banning the morons quickly.
It’s been a bad year to be a Mariner fan. There were nights I would wait for my bus to Safeco Field and think “Do I really want to go through with this tonight?” But it’s been a great year to write for the U.S.S. Mariner, and I hope it’s been a good year to be a reader.
So thanks, everybody. You’ve been a great crowd.
A closing anecdote:
During this season, I was driving into Seattle in the middle of the day, listening to a sports talk show, and I heard a caller read — almost word for word — something I had posted the night before as if it was some insight they’d just had. The host said it was an excellent point, and went on… but I started to laugh despite myself.
We’ve been pilfered before in order to make someone seem funny. That was the first time I’d ever heard someone use the U.S.S. Mariner to make themselves seem smart.
That’s pretty cool, when you think about it.
Off-season to-do list
I’ve been asked “So what are you going to do in the off-season?”
A brief summary:
– spend time with the Mrs.
– write my chapters for Baseball Prospectus 2005
– research, writing for Secret Project 1, details forthcoming
– research, writing for Secret Project 2, details not forthcoming
– improve the site some more
– possibly launch bizarre, ill-fated site features
– research stocks
– read books
– play video games
I also may watch some football.
The off-season doesn’t do a lot to lighten my workload. Anyway, back to the keyboard.