As Phil has already mentioned, we have the Major League Baseball Extra Innings package. He's also right about the fiendish catchiness of the Foxwoods casino jingle, but wrong about me leaving him: the scientist in me can't resist the chance to return to observational work, and he's basically set up a prime field study for me in our living room and our office. Who could walk away from that?
In any event: the baseball, she is part of our lives. We have weekend jaunts planned around Baseball Prospectus get-togethers or SABR meetings. Phil keeps me company as I recap by taking trips to Baseball Planet. I embarass myself in front of an entire newsroom by mangling "Angels We Have Heard On High" after a particularly puckish coworker offers to give away tickets to the Angels game tomorrow night to the first person who will sing an angel-related song. I don't even like the Angels.
I'm nowhere near as obsessive as the folks mentioned in Slate's "Baseblogs" -- and sweet fancy Moses, what will it take for California teams and their weblogs to get their due? -- but I was moderately interested by the inclusion of someone who is presumably laboring under the burden of someone else's obsession, The Baseball Widow.
My initial amusement was due to the whole idea of a sports weblog kept by someone who was not necessarily the one with the passion for the sport; it seems analogous to Phil keeping a weblog titled "Comics Widower." I should probably be irked that the sole chick blog in the piece is one which centers on the woman's relationship to a man who, presumably, puts the national pasttime before the nuptial pleasures (the blog disabuses you of that idea in a hurry), but I tend to save my feminist media critiquing for other issues.
However, if you do want to read more women who are into the baseball, you could do worse than to swing by Laurel Krahn's digs (she roots for the Twins, and writes about them from time to time), or to romp through Yankee fan Sarah Bunting's archives, where she writes about the sport with the brio of a true believer. (Start here, here, here or here.)
Baseball is a great sport for readers, period. This probably goes a long way in explaining why I've grown to like it so much.
Joe Sheehan of BP is a great writer. I can barely stomach ESPN these days. Long live BP!
Posted by: andy b | 2004.04.20 at 05:44
It wasn't just the CA bloggers who got shafted; I looked in vain for Braves Journal.
I hate the Yankees. Haaaaaaaaate. But I love when Sars writes about them.
Posted by: Jessica | 2004.04.20 at 12:07
My wife didn't like baseball all that much before she met me. After stomaching weeks of my yammering about Moneyball (OPS! management revolution! it's not how they fit in jeans!), she started watching along with me. Now, with few TV programming options that we both can agree upon, we resort to watching a game nearly every night. We don't have Extra Innings (perhaps that might be rectified), so we're stuck watching the Braves, the Orioles, or whatever FOX throws at us.
It's telling that you can't find many baseball blogs written by women. (I'm not sure Sars or Laurel count -- they cover tons of other stuff.) There used to be a few, and I don't know what happened to them. I may be making the mistaken assumption that all baseball blogs are written by men, who knows?
Posted by: mike | 2004.04.21 at 10:03
My apologies for the numerous trackbacks. Everytime I edit my entry, it sends another ping. Please feel free to delete this comment and those multiple trackbacks.
Posted by: newbie | 2004.04.22 at 13:27