Milestone Achieved!

On one hand I didn’t think I would ever get here. On the other I can’t believe it took this long. After all, some bloggers seem to post 100 times in a week. I ,on the other hand, took roughly 28 months to get to the century mark. I have a feeling the next 100 won’t take so long.

As I’ve approached this minor milestone I’ve been wondering a lot as to why I do this. It’s not making me any money, it takes away from time I could be looking for a real job, and when I look back at some of the things I wrote some of it’s not really written that well. Hopefully, there has been some improvement, however, I will never get the hang of commas. I tend to just throw them in there at random times, especially if I haven’t used one in a while.

So why do I do this? I guess because I like it. I had originally started the blog to point out the absurdity of following sports in an area where 80% of the populations seems to be from somewhere else and bandwagon fans are not only welcome, but encouraged. I live in a market where afternoon sports radio is dominated by one person and has been for the last 16 years. I live in a town where a surprisingly large amount of people think Mike Alstott deserves to be in the hall of fame. I live in a town where Vincent Lecavalier and newest Buc Josh Freeman can walk around unnoticed.

I wanted to point out how uncultured and ignorant the every day fan is down here. And while I still believe that, I find myself only pointing it out in extreme circumstances. Dwelling in that type of negativity, boosting my own ego by pointing out the flaws of others wasn’t my style. How could I make fun of all the 8 games a year Red Sox fans when I cheer for both the Rays and the O’s. I was no different then them. Although, I will point out that when I attend an O’s / Rays game I remain neutral. Well, mostly neutral.

So instead of writing about the failings of others I decided to write about the teams I like. I tend to be pro-team when I write. There is enough bashing of owners and management out there already. I like to think that the people that run these teams know what they’re doing, unless they’re named Len Barrie.

Another boost was writing about card collecting and rediscovering the fun of trading cards with other people, some thing I hadn’t done since I was about 9. It was kind of odd that the first trade that I pulled off was with someone who lived in England, but since then I’ve discovered the joy of receiving padded, yellow envelopes from all over the U.S.

What will the next 100 posts bring? Hopefully, it will bring a Stanley Cup run for the Lightning, a Premiership title for Liverpool, another Super Bowl for the Ravens and a third place finish for the O’s (my optimism only goes so far).

Some random thoughts about the first 100 posts:

Thing I’m most proud of:

If you type “Toe Nash” into Google my post from January of 2008 is the first hit.

Favorite Posts to Write:

The reviews of my preseason prognostications. Man am I bad at predicting stuff. I am the Max Kellerman of the blogging world.

Things I’ve Learned:

Readers will not magically appear. You have to get out there and talk with the people. Exchanging site links with other writers is the best way to get your blog out there.

Write my post. Walk away. Come back and re-work it from there. I found my posts were exponentially better once I started doing that.

There are a lot more O’s fans out there than I originally thought. I knew a lot of people would be looking for Rays cards based on their recent success, but I figured the O’s would be nice and lonely. I’m glad to see that folks like Beardy, Chris and Kevin are around bleeding the black and orange.


One minor change. I’ve dropped the tremendously awkward handle of “Costanza’s Brother”. It was a stupid reference to Seinfeld and way to long to type out. Everyone I trade with knows me as Justin G., so I figured I would simplify life and just go with that.