This is a night I've been looking forward to since Oct. 11, 2009, the day the Red Sox were swept out of the post-season by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. If that series wasn't hard enough, Red Sox Nation had to watch the Yankees reclaim the throne as World Series Champions a few weeks later.
After a nice gentleman so kindly posted "Ellsbury sucks." to my Facebook wall the other day, my anticipation of Opening Night at Fenway grew exponentially. Hopefully the outcome of the game will be something to brag about.
To tie this with new media, the start of a new season means something for avid fans. My father has been blogging about the Detroit Tigers for at least five years now. After almost every game he will sit at the computer critiquing the players, the coaching, the commentators, the fans, the groundscrew, the...you get the point. For him, blogging has become an entirely new part of baseball. It allows him, and everyone else using the site, to discuss all aspects of the game. He has even made friends with other bloggers - last summer we met up with one of them and his wife at a game in Pittsburgh.
I'm not saying that this type of blogging has any real impact on the game or the future of the season, but using the example of my dad, blogging seems to have become a new social network. This time though, the only people involved are die hard fans of baseball who are looking to talk about nothing else.
Each major league team has their own blog site - search for them here. Some are still led by the original blogger who will post discussion topics that everyone else can respond to. Depending on what comes out of the fans, some of these discussions have been able to cultivate stories. Bloggers have asked questions about the game that beat writers have then addressed in their reports - like a glorified mailbag or letter to the editor.
I don't know as much about the game as my father, and I don't have time to write the, at times, exhaustively long posts like him. When I can, I do enjoy reading what others have to say. And for the most part, these blogs are serious enough that there aren't too many "Ellsbury sucks" spouts in the comments.
Go Sox!
The kind gentleman didn't just spout an unsupported claim (read the UZR portion of this column http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100402)
ReplyDeleteIf anything, this backs your claim of blogging being a now almost needed supplement to, well, anything (especially sports). I read Bill Simmons religiously because I want to gain insight on a different perspective on sports (I hate all New England sports, he solely roots for them). Ieven partake in the blogging aspect.
At this point, it's become society's way of contributing to sports reporters, as if their (our) opinion's mattered.
I love it.