Tagged: padres
Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, New Ballparks
I chatted with Keith Olbermann for a while on the field during Padres batting practice just before the Citi Field opener on Monday, and took the profile pic of him above on his MLBlog. He is really enthused about his MLBlogging, as you can see from his very impassioned posts. Below is a grab of the MSNBC video clip from last night’s show, in which
Rachel Maddow chatted with him about baseball and his
popular MLBlog Baseball Nerd. “Can we do this all the time?” she asked him. Be sure to regularly watch for Keith’s posts, but remember that he already has advised everyone he could care less what you say in the comments. So if you want to get all political, he just doesn’t care. Talk baseball.
I’ll be working the Yankee Stadium home opener all day and will post some pics, tweets and all that good stuff. This site actually has the best way for me to find my own MLB.com articles, always chronological, in case you want to catch up as it is an Opening Blur. In the meantime, here were some shots I took Monday in Queens — where they now have a ballpark that I consider second to none in baseball.
Spheroid: Around the Horn with Dan Weisman, Baseball Investigator
Title: Around the Horn with Dan Weisman, Baseball Investigator
MLBlogger: Dan Weisman
Template: Padres | First Post in The Show
I truly, truly enjoy baseball. My first memories are of baseball games. Some of the greatest and most memorable events of my life are permeated with baseball. I eat, drink and sleep baseball. My only regret today at a somewhat advanced age is I no longer feel comfortable playing. With that said, I’ve seen so much and see so much, I’d like to give other fans and fellow travelers a bit of humor, insight and memory related to the sport. The new communication environment with more free-form writing possibilities in blog formats works well with my writing and observatory style.
What was your favorite post?
The next one. I don’t want to waste my, or anyone’s, time. I liked the Dr. Strangeglove and From Japan with Love posts.
Strangest blogging experience?
So far, checking the viewer stats and seeing where viewers reside. My gosh, Moscow, Shanghai, Singapore, Africa, all over South America and incredibly well-distributed across the U.S. and Canada. As someone who grew up in a print journalism environment, just seeing the diversity and spontanaeity of viewership was wild.
What is your favorite blog, including at least one MLBlog?
So far, I like the Detroit Tigers Daily Fungo which you featured. That guy has done an amazing job. I’m very impressed with the time he puts into it and the quality of information. Daron Sutton’s is fun, and well-done with a mix of image and materials. Alyssa Milano’s for not-so-obvious reasons. and obvious ones.
What would you be doing if you weren’t blogging?
Watching baseball. I also dumpster dive and scrounge for money; exercise, hike and batter-cize, and watch television. All My Children fan. Also, drive around Rancho Santa Fe and chill.
Where do you think the blogosphere is going?
Obviously, more interactive. Addition of social networking features. Easier access to features. More mobile features. Other ways not appreciated just yet.
Favorite team and why?
Different teams at different times. As my life and location changed, so, too, did my allegiances. Today, I have sympathies for some teams and enjoy watching some teams more than others, but I find this is function of the team makeup at the time generally.
Very earliest days, the Giants. Then, shifted to the Mets because they were the ultimate underdogs and so was I. After that, the Astros and heady days at the Dome. Following that, Mariners, as stuff happened, then in time for some championships with the Blue Jays, followed by Devil Rays and Padres.
What is one thing most people don’t know about you?
During my days in Arkansas, I actually debated Bill Clinton about sports on numerous occasions at various places. I was assigned by the Arkansas Democrat to cover him. I’m also a Rice University graduate. Rice and Arkansas were in the old — and I do miss it — Southwest Conference. So, Clinton and I would discuss the Rice-Arkansas football games. We also talked about other sports like baseball and basketball, etc. At the Pepsi-Coke challenge, he took the taste test and said, “I can’t decide. They both taste good.” (Footnote: Never saw Hillary around any time then.)
Happiness is…
A great seafood barbecue a’la my old New Orleans home. Oh yes, and a game-winning home run in the bottom of the Ninth Inning to win the game and avoid a 100-loss season. Y’all can go home, now.
To be considered as a featured Spheroid, feel free to email us with your responses to those nine questions and be sure to put “Spheroid” in the subject line. Have fun blogging…
MLBlogs Network updates
Updated 9 p.m. ET Tuesday
Our friend Roberto over at Blogging Dodgers and Baseball asked in the comments: “What happened to my Photo album? No more albums?” This entire project has been an upgrade from the antiquated Typepad 1.0 app and steady upgrades will be added. Among them will be the development of an Asset Gallery. MT currently designates photos, videos and audio files as “assets”, and look for that enhancement in the near future.
Speaking of Dodgers blogging, check out original MLBlogger Tommy Lasorda’s post from tonight. Great story about Steve Sax and Kenny Landreaux. Only Tommy can tell it like that!
We temporarily changed “Most Recent” to “Most Recent Activity” just to avoid any confusion while the automation of latest blog headlines is being worked on. As you’ve probably noticed, saving any entries, including comments, causes a blog to have its title show up there. So when you see the MLB.com Visitor’s Guide listed often, for example, that means someone on the MLB.com homepage just saw the prominent link to give us feedback about the MLB.com homepage design. That company blog is an MLBlog just like yours, so that comment makes it show up in the “Most Recent Activity” just like you saving a new text post. Soon there will be multiple tabs for Most Recent, Most Popular, etc. But for now, it’s just overall activity. This is what Facebook users are used to seeing on their Dashboard/Home page, so it’s not uncommon, but we obviously want to separate the comments from that.
Bottom line is that the “Most Recent Activity” headlines keep changing fast around the clock now, and it’s a good way to get around to other blogs. With more getaround to come.
All linked lists are
republished in the sidebar (on the *next* publish). We’re going to add
a callback to make these things publish more aggressively.
One of the best things I’m seeing is so many bloggers asking and learning about tags. These will become increasingly important going forward with MT — incredibly important. Now is a good time to start always tagging words/phrases relevant to your entry you’re saving, whether it’s a text post or an Asset. When we add Search Tags, you’ll want people to find you that way. If you’re a Yankees blogger, for example, you should always tag “yankees”. Then when someone searches for all “yankees” tags, they can find your entry.
Comment
settings on this community blog are restored to descend so most recent
is at bottom. Thanks for the feedback. Funny how we are accustomed to
comments being first at Facebook, MySpace and elsewhere, but here most
people want to scroll to the bottom to find their new comment!
Preferences seem to vary from site to site.
We’ll be adding a
“Next” and “Previous” link in the near future on the top of all blogs,
similar to your average Blogger page. Any further ways we can help
bloggers find each other is one of our top priorities (along with
assets/link lists). IMPORTANT: Please feel free to keep nominating
yourself here to get on that valuable spot at the bottom of the MLB.com
homepage! We added that blog excerpt feature when we relaunched the
MLB.com homepage last week, and each day we have been driving that
audience to a different MLBlog. Make it easier for us by posting 15 to
25 words you hope to have excerpted as a comment here, and include your
URL. It’s great to post comments here about how the blogs are working,
but you can be your own marketer as a blogger and help MLB.com editors
know what you’re posting.
Please let me know here if you are experiencing any issues with getting from the green Signin link on the MLBlogs.com homepage to the actual signin page.
One tag cloud problem on MLBlogs.com
has been that Categories migrated over as tags, so it doesn’t matter
how many times you enter the word “Yankees” or “Royals” as a tag, it
would take years before they overtook three years worth of Categories
listings in ranking. So we’ve asked that a time code be added to
exclude any of those migrated tags.
All of the comments on this
blog are added to an ongoing queue and we appreciate them very much. I
appreciate everyone’s patience. Among dozens and dozens of other things
being worked on by the MT software developers and various PMs and
programmers, I am going to at least get the old Browse by Team
functionality back on here as a stop-gap while we wait for a smarter
automation based on template choice. It’s a long season and you kind of
have to have an even keel attitude like the players do. Keep reporting
any bugs/issues, and please keep helping other MLBloggers within these
comments if you share experiences where you’ve found solutions. And
yes, I’d like to see paragraphs back within these comments, too!
Take Me Out To The Blog Game
We’re looking for someone to sing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” at the All-Star Game this July 15 at Yankee Stadium. If you sing or can perform a version of that song as well as you blog about baseball, then enter your video in the contest by late May and then comment on the Take Me Out To The Blog Game page that just went up here. . . .
Predictions – mine and yours
On April 1, 2007, I predicted on the MLB.com homepage that the Rockies would be in their first World Series. For full disclosure, I had them beating Texas. My philosophy in this era is pretty simple: The majority predictions will be abject failures, and it will be Shocktober. You know in your heart when you have been making your picks out there that there is no way in hell it is going to be right, but somehow you were taught to use logic in baseball.
Here we are at the start of another season, and I just wanted to be on record first with my predictions for 2008. I am going with the Padres all the way this year. I feel the same thing about them I did with Colorado last year. I believe it is their time. First of all, let me summarize why I believe it is time for San Diego’s first major sports championship.
I am a Bud Black guy. When I was a Giants beat writer for the San Jose Mercury News, I was around Bud every day and he was my go-to guy. He just exuded class to me, intelligence, leadership, and grittiness. That was toward the end of a fine career. I think Bud Black is your next generation’s Tony La Russa or Bobby Cox, and by that I mean a guy who is going to be approaching records for managerial victories. I think he wins his first World Series as a manager in 2008, having won as a pitching coach with the Angels (2002), having won as a player (1985 Royals), and I think he will have a lot of pennants and world championships as a manager in the years ahead.
He has the pitching. He knows what to do with it. Jake Peavy, untouchable. (And yes, it was before Peavy’s Opening Day dream game that I turned this ballot into our company predictions keeper who does this each year.) Chris Young — my predicted Cy Young winner. Horribly bad-luck second half last year, should have been an 18-game winner, will go 22-5 in 2008. Mark Prior, you’re back and in the right place around Black. Greg Maddux at the back of your rotation. (Ex-Cub factor everywhere, not a great sign.) Heath Bell showed during the pennant race what a terror he is going to be in late innings. Trevor Hoffman is looking good this spring. I look at San Diego’s roster and up and down their pitching — and it is so late October.
Jim Edmonds (DL) and Tadahito Iguchi bring the rings. Adrian Gonzalez is going to be the why-not-him All-Star sentimental buzz in a few months. These guys will get back to Shocktober, but it won’t be with old perceptions. NL West and a World Series to SD. I’d feel even stronger about it with a little more sizzle in the Padres’ lineup, but I still believe it is their time.
NL East: Mets. NL Central: Brewers. NL West: Padres. NL Wild Card: Braves.
AL East: Red Sox. AL Central: Indians. AL West: Mariners. AL Wild Card: Tigers.
MVPs: Prince Fielder, David Ortiz. Cy Youngs: Chris Young, Justin Verlander.
It’s fun. You can really make a case for almost every team. The past couple of months I’ve thought about the likelihood of a Sendoff Series in New York, I’ve liked the Brewers (easily could win it all), I’ve liked the Angels (something doesn’t feel right now, injuries only part of it), I’ve liked the Indians (CC/FC, out go the lights), etc. I think it’s stupid to pick Boston because 29 teams are standing in the way of repeating, and all but a handful could win the ring. This is why more than 80 million butts will hit seats. That and the fact that we love this game. Yesterday brought back everything to me, thinking about what it felt like to get good wood on the ball and smash homers into cornfields as a teenager in Indiana, how much you hated hearing that the field had too much water after that storm so you’re rained out today, playing whiffleball in the streets in the rain and using ghostrunners and pretending you are the ’70 Twins and Carew is up, teaching your son to chuck those big acorns at Redwoods in SF to learn to throw on his way to becoming a high school All-Stater one day, playing pitch-and-catch and hotbox all the time, scoring a 4-6-3 double play, asking Terry Mulholland to sign your scorebook after his no-hitter, watching Joe Carter’s ’93 homer land right in front of you, being there for Cal’s 2,131st, being there for Big Mac’s 62nd, being there for Michael Jordan’s Spring Training experiment, remembering how mad you were in ’94 and how happy you are now, standing next to Youk and Papelbon on the infield grass last October at Fenway as they did the strut immediately after clinching the pennant, just loving baseball. I still love it and I know you do, too.
Who’s going to win it all?
MLB.com Blogs Central 