Hello World
It was during elementary school that my love affair with sports first started, and quickly progressed into a full-blown infatuation. In kindergarten I played kickball during recess, wiffle ball on the weekends, and my favorite class was gym (if we’re not counting nap time). While I was walking around Staples the following year doing all my back to school shopping, I turned to my mother proudly and said that I was ditching the Ninja Turtles, and demanded a matching New York Yankee backpack, lunchbox, and novelty pencil set. My parents obliged, and I returned to school in first grade with a sports-themed set of school supplies and the outfit to match.
Once my Dad realized he had found a kindred spirit in his son, he took it upon himself to be my guide, teaching me about everything there was to know about the New York sports world (probably before he had any business doing so). After all, how many 3rd graders do you know who had a working knowledge of “scalping” that was completely unrelated to the violent lice-checks nurses would perform in elementary school?
By 4th grade, I knew a scalper by name. Marcus. Great guy -- although my friend’s parents found it somewhat awkward when the kid their son brought to the Yankee game started saying “hi” to strangers in the city.
In 5th grade, my sports education progressed even further as my Dad and I worked tirelessly to construct a diorama of the cesspool region surrounding the Meadowlands for my school project about swamps, complete with the requisite labels depicting all the features usually found in swampland. We also included a toothpick-sign pointing to
Jimmy Hoffa’s buried body underneath the stadium to add to the project’s authenticity.
My Mom said it was inappropriate, but in our first act of rebellion we went ahead and included it anyway. My teacher laughed, my fellow students didn’t understand, and the administration made me take it down before the parents came in for the school’s Open House.
During this time my father also made sure that I was exposed to some of the most exciting Yankees experiences possible. We were stuck standing desperately outside the stadium roaming for tickets during the first game of the World Series in 1996. We listened to the radio in rapture as David Wells pitched a perfect game in 1998. And we were supposed to be at the one David Cone threw in 1999, but it was supposedly “too hot” to go to a baseball game that day. I still hold it against him to this day.
I stood three rows back during no fewer than four Yankee brawls, and narrowly avoided being brained by a flying cleat one time that I have reason to believe
belonged to Darryl Strawberry, mainly because I saw him throw it. I watched the World Series anxiously in 1998, and again in ’99 as I cheered on my favorite team. In 2000, I was responsible for “strongly urging” my best friend to make sure his birthday party took place near a TV so we could watch the Yanks go for their third championship in as many years.
I was heartbroken in 2001 when my world shattered and Luis Gonzalez of all people hit a bloop single off New York’s indomitable closer, Mariano Rivera, during the 9th inning of Game 7 to end the Yankees’ streak of postseason dominance. I also remember being screamed at by my mother for staying up too late on a school night and waking “the whole neighborhood” up by shouting profanities at the TV. She clearly didn’t understand I was in mourning.
Everything came full circle last year when I flew home from school so I could watch Game 2 of the World Series with my Dad, and finally love the dream we hatched in ’96.
Off the field, my Dad and I also discussed good sports writing, and I scoured stacks of books and piles of magazines in search of my favorite writers. He and I latched on to a few favorites, namely Rick Reilly for his ability to turn a phrase and come up with unique story ideas. We read and talked about his articles and style of writing in detail as a way to help me improve my own writing during middle school.
As I’ve grown older, sports have remained one of my biggest passions, and my primary distraction at school. I now try to keep up with everything that is going on in the sports world, and have ESPN and FOX Sports piping into my apartment constantly. I pride myself on being a thoughtful, logical, usually rational sports fan.
Of course, like any good sports fan, I do have a few quirks and intricacies. I hate the beloved Peyton Manning, loathe Boston hero Jonathan Papelbon, and detest everything
ignorant sports fans and
analysts like these stand for. In my defense, I do have valid reasons for despising each, as Manning has cemented himself as a money-loving shill by appearing in more commercials than the Geico lizard and once charging a girl’s family $50,000 to have him
appear at her Bat Mitvah. Jonathan Papelbon has a long history of whining and complaining at umpires and throwing at Yankee batters. And the fans and analysts? Well, if you don’t understand that one, I hate to break it to you, but you’re a card-carrying member of the category too.
This blog has grown naturally out of my longing for a place to share my thoughts and opinions of all the goings-on in the sports world and interact more deeply with the thing I love so much. It is my goal to promote a logical, rational discussion of the issues in sports that make me laugh, cry, throw my remote through the TV, or pull my hair out. I can’t promise that you’ll agree with me, although I do guarantee you’ll know where I stand.
Now stepping to the plate, Number 2, the writer of “Perusing the Back Pages.”
Profiling a Blog
As a zealous Yankee fan that seeks the best coverage about the team possible, one of the daily habits that I have developed is reading a few blogs and publications that cover the team. Chief on the reading list ever day is “River Ave Blues”; a blog written by three baseball-loving buddies about the New York Yankees. The three friends started the blog, which gets its namesake from where Yankee stadium is located (
161st Street & River Avenue) as a way to get under the hood of their favorite baseball team and interact with like-minded fans much like myself. Like the attitude that I expressed in the “Hello World,” post, they seek a better, more thorough and complex understanding of the game they love. It is not enough to merely say, “A-Rod hit baseball far; A-Rod good at baseball,” or “Manny throw tantrum; Manny bad at baseball.”
The writers of this blog seek to look at the game and different situations that occur over the course of it analytically, analyzing everything from the state of the team to the price of the tickets on Stubhub. Other posts written by “River Ave Blues,” look at a certain pitcher’s pitch selections or a hitter’s tendencies; and analyze the life out of the statistics to try to determine something worthwhile (or discover that they spent a whole lot of time conducting a thorough analysis only to completely waste their time).They mine all of the sources available on the Internet, such as Baseball Prospectus, fangraphs.com, and others to delve into the latest information available about the sport. They discuss topics like, “WPA,” which is a measure of how likely it is that a certain team is going to win the game based on what has occurred so far; “WHIP,” which stands for walks+hits per innings pitched to discuss the game in a more complex manner than the mainstream media.
Yet they do this in such a way that it doesn’t suck all life out of the game or drain the sport of its excitement. They balance these posts with other posts ranting against the bad contracts taken on by the team, hair-pulling decisions made by the manager over the course of the game, or something else that has gone on in the sport that elicits a passionate response. And of course since they are fans at the core, they show emotion every night. The three writers get excited when the team wins, are a bit bummed when the team loses, and have the same goal in mind as most other Yankee fans- make it back to the World Series in October. Yet they don’t rant, rave, curse, and mumble like so many fans or draw unfounded conclusions simply for their narrative value, like the mainstream sports media.
Given the plethora of topics the blog covers, there are multiple posts every day from all three writers depending on what is going on in the sports world that day. The site has a few regular features, like a
Game Thread during the game so readers can discuss the action as it is occurring, a
Game Recap describing the action after the game is over, a weekly
Fan Confidence Poll, a weekly chat, and a few others. Yet all of these offer a unique perspective and voice, as the Game Recap is not just simply a run through the events, but hits on the specific highs and lows, as well as what could’ve bee done differently. In addition, the bloggers all inject their personal feelings watching the game at that time, making the write-ups and analysis all a bit more personal and “real.”
The regularity of the posts and terrific analysis offered by the blog has attracted an incredible following among both Yankee fans and fans of baseball in general, reaching at least 5,900 readers that subscribe to the feed- not to mention the countless others that just pop by regularly. The site has gotten so popular that the Yankees TV Network, “YES Network” has started mentioning posts the blog has done and linking to the site. River Ave Blues has definitely earned the respect of the baseball community as all three writers have established themselves as knowledgeable fans capable of discussing their team and the sport with authority. You trust what they say and know it has merit behind it. ESPN, YES Network, and other mainstream media outlets have even quoted pieces on the blog and commended the three writers for their astute analysis and professional- albeit unpaid- coverage.
Any new reader should be sure to check out a few specific posts before diving full-on into the blog. One particularly useful post was the one that
explained a majority of the statistics and abbreviations that are used on the site, giving the readers the language necessary to fully understand the analysis. Another is a more in-depth
guide to the lingo and running jokes that appear frequently in the posts and comments on the site, which is a must for anybody that wants to fully understand the conversation occurring on the site. Recently the writers also tried a new feature, a
mailbag that answered a few of the better questions submitted by readers, which was very well done. Hopefully that becomes a recurring feature on the site as well.
This site can definitely serve as a useful model that I can aspire to with my blog, although there will definitely be differences between my posts and those that appear on River Ave Blues. I will definitely cover prominent topics in sports and inject my personal opinion and emotion into the posts, but unlike this site my blog will not be limited to baseball or the Yankees. River Ave Blues does go beyond the team and sport on occasion, but my blog will draw from the hot topics across all sports. I will also try to walk the careful line of injecting my personal opinions and emotions as a fan into the posts I write while maintaining a high quality of analysis and integrity of the coverage, much like River Ave Blues. My blog will feature the same analytical, thoughtful writing yet will probably not turn to complicated statistical analysis and baseball terminology as frequently as River Ave Blues does. My ultimate goal is to make my blog one that the writers of River Ave Blues would enjoy reading; and who knows- maybe I’ll get lucky and manage to achieve a small percentage of the readership that their site has reached.
Voice Post- My Admiration of Another Yankee Blogger's Distinct Writing Style
One of the reasons I have been so enthralled with the blog “
The Yankeeist,” is because of the distinct, amusing style of the blog’s chief writer, Larry Koestler. On his blog about baseball and the Yankees, Larry Koestler does not simply summarize the headlines that day- he injects his opinion, personality, and strong voice in all of his posts.
Mr. Koestler sprinkles all of his posts with his hilarious sense of humor, evident right from the beginning from all of the posts clever titles like,
“Hey Will, Mike Lupica called and He Wants His Overwhelming Negativity Back,” and “The 2010 New York Yankees vs. Starting Pitchers Who Don’t Crack 90 MPH With Their Fastballs.”
The first title, “Hey Will, Mike Lupica called and He Wants His Overwhelming Negativity Back,” is a critical yet comedic name for Larry’s post about a pessimistic article that Will Leitch wrote about the Yankees’ chances of making the playoffs. The second piece addresses a popular meme among Yankees fans that the team is unable to solve noodle-armed pitchers in a humorous manner.
The titles of these posts also show that Larry is clearly a devoted fan of the team that is knowledgeable about the ballclub and in tune with both the media that cover it and the fan base that cheers for it. Mr. Koestler is obviously in touch with the New York media that cover the Yankees because of his reference to
Mike Lupica, a New York Daily News columnist that is notorious for his negative pieces about all things Yankees.
The other post about the pitchers that lack velocity proves that Larry follows the team closely and is quite aware of the discussions his fellow fans have about the ballclub. This lends a sense of authority and credibility to his writing, as he obviously knows his subject matter quite well.
Further evidence of Larry’s expertise with both the Yankees and the sport of baseball appears in just about all of his posts, as he discusses subjects that only a well-informed fan would be familiar with. He covers these topics in an analytical, thorough manner, and often includes statistical analysis or proof to back up his argument. Perhaps the best example of this is the chart of pitchers and their statistics that he includes in his
analysis of how the Yankees have fared against softball hurlers.
"Here's a look back at all of the games this season in which the Yankees faced a starter whose fastball has averaged 90mph or less during the course of his career (per Fangraphs' data). A fairly arbitrary number, I know, but using 90mph as a cutoff was fairly significant, as it turned up 44 games as opposed to 75 if I widened the criteria to include pitchers who top out at 91mph. Of course, 44 games is still a pretty wide swath of the season -- 32% of the team's 138 games to date, to be exact."
This also illustrates Larry’s knowledge of how the team’s players have performed, which builds up his character as a passionate Yankee fan.
The fact that Mr. Koestler is a rational, analytical fan willing to think through the issues and explore other arguments also shines through in his writing. This rationality and logical way of thinking is established by Larry’s willingness to address the counter-arguments and admit their validity if they happen to be true. One example of this is in Larry’s post parsing Mr. Leitch’s article. In the post, he concedes that Mr. Leitch is correct with a few of his points with his acknowledgment that:
“Yes, the rotation's been something of a mess since Andy Pettitte went down. Yes, A.J. Burnett's been terrible. Yes, Javier Vazquez has been arguably even worse, if that's even possible. Yes, Phil Hughes has hit a wall due to pitching more innings than he ever has before in his career.Is the prospect of going into October with only one reliable starting pitcher in CC Sabathia nerve-wracking? Of course.”
This shows that he has thought through the issue instead of quickly dismissing it as slander that he does not agree with. After addressing the points that are valid, he then makes his thorough rebuttal, which works to strengthen his argument and add an heir of believability to his opinions.
“With regards to the first point, I've been as frustrated with A.J. Burnett as the next Yankee fan, but I also feel he has too long a track record of pitching effectively to continue being as terrible as he's been.”
As opposed to simply stating his case, Mr. Koestler contextualizes it and puts it in a conversation with the points Mr. Leitch raised in the NY Magazine.
My favorite feature of the blog is that Larry’s character and voice are so ingrained in the writing. He does this with his careful word choice and use of language. One example of this is when Mr. Koestler describes Leitch’s article as just another “in the long line of Yankee schadenfreude.” In addition to being an intriguing word, this elevates the status of the topic, and is a much more clever way to describe the article than “in the long line of negative pieces about the Yankees.”
Other uses of figurative language include his description of Leitch’s topic as “low-hanging fruit,” and his vivid description of New York Magazine and their readership. Like
Marc Antony in Shakespeare propping Brutus up as an “honorable man,” only to tear him apart later, Larry compliments the publication sarcastically by describing its supposedly positive attributes.
“Shouldn’t a magazine that prides itself on being the singular voice of the hip, educated, and moneyed denizens of New York City.”
This is a much more clever, humorous way to criticize the magazine as it does so indirectly.
The final feature of Larry’s voice worth noting is his use of self-deprecating humor and tongue-in-cheek comments. Examples of this include his description of what articles like Mr. Leitch’s are intended to do, which is
“rile up a bunch of stuck-up, arrogant Yankee fans,”
as well as his acknowledgment that the piece is
“a ploy to wrack up page views and get links”
along with the parenthetical admission that “(obviously I’ve taken the bait)." Larry clearly isn’t calling all Yankee fans stuck up and arrogant, as he is a fan of the team himself and those are his primary readers. He is playing on a popular stereotype that Yankees fans are arrogant because they are so used to winning, and allying himself with the fans that are subjected to the stereotype. The second comment about the article as a ploy, which he admits he has fallen for, is Larry’s way of letting readers into his inner narrative so that they can see he is completely aware of the irony that by writing his post, he is doing exactly what Leitch wanted.
This is such a great blog because of Larry’s strong writing style that all works to build up his character and amuse his audience.
