The Futility Infielder

Though the "official" date passed last Friday and I've mentioned it just about everywhere else on this site, I haven't posted the news to this blog yet: the Futility Infielder is now three years old.

It's hard to believe time has passed so quickly. Though it doesn't feel quite like yesterday when I registered this domain, it's as fresh in my memory as last week. What's even harder to believe is that I'm still at it. When I started the site, never in my nine years since graduating college had I developed the discipline to write regularly. Three years later, I've got hundreds of readers a day, occasionally I get paid for my work, and I can claim a whole network of friends and allies across the globe, many of whom have become a real part of my life here in New York City.

Of course, I never envisioned the blogging medium would take off to the extent that it did. I began building my site in April of 2001, putting it up piece by piece -- mostly a few profiles, game reports, and other essays. The blog didn't go live until mid-June with this post. I did some research recently and checked out some of my "old" peers, finding only one -- Baseball News Blog -- with archives that went back before that (all the way to February). Christian Ruzich (The Cub Reporter) came to the blogging scene right after I did, though I believe he'd been doing a baseball site prior to the blog, and John Bonnes (Twins Geek) another month later. Visiting the great Internet Wayback Machine, I looked up Baseball News Blog, which had archived a page from May 16 of that year. This is what it lists under weblogs:

Clutch Hits [Baseball Primer]
Sean Forman's Blog [Baseball Primer]
Don Malcolm's Blog [Baseball Primer]
Al's Baseball Tidbits [Baseball Primer]
SurfJones Baseball [SportsJones site, now defunct]
Hot Stove Diner [a group site which took forever to load but had a great banner, now gone]
On Base [Ben Matasar, who went on to form Baseball Junkie with Ryan Wilkins]
Around Baseball - ?
Astroday (Astros) - ?
Dye-O-Meter (Royals) [not really a blog, by the look of it]
Curse of etc. (Red Sox) [Bambino's Curse, still functional]
Bookworm's Blog (Yankees) [not really baseball-focused but still functional at new site]

By the end of June, here's the list:

Clutch Hits
Sean's Outside the Box
Hot Stove Diner
On Base
Futility Infielder
Rob & Rany on the Royals [Neyer and Jazayerli's site, which went defunct and then revived]
Astroday
Curse of the Bambino
The Other Side [Mets; still around, but not really baseball]
Cub Rants [still active]
The Cub Reporter [thriving]
News and Views [White Sox, one of the better ones for awhile, now defunct]
Braves Journal [still kickin']
ExposNET News [goes back to '97 in some form or another but not necessarily a blog]
Detroit Tiger Weblog [can you blame them for giving up?]
News from a Fan (LA) [a woman, Sarah Morris, who ended up getting hired by MLB]

Now so many blogs exist that nobody could possibly list them all, let alone visit each one on a regular basis. I find myself forgetting where I read stuff all the time, and I know it's not just early senility setting in -- it's a whole new ballgame for writing about baseball.

On the occasion of the site's third birthday, I've completed a piece I'd been meaning to do for years, a profile of Luis Sojo for my Wall of Fame. I had a blast doing the research, digging through Retrosheet and taking advantage of my SABR membership, which includes access to the New York Times archive via Proquest (worth the SABR price all by itself) and scouring the web for more information. I found myself reading articles that I remember emailing to friends and tripping down memory lane. Here is my intro to the piece, which I'm convinced might be the most detailed overview of Sojo's career:

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: this website wouldn't exist if not for the heroics of Luis Sojo, role player-turned-World-Series-hero. At a time when this Internet outpost was nothing more than a twinkle in my eye, Sojo's October 2000 performance provided an unlikely source of inspiration: if a frumpy but amiable futility infielder could drive in the winning run of a World Series, then perhaps the rest of us could hope to transcend our limitations as well. Though I've mentioned Sojo dozens of times in my blog and other writings, his spot on my Wall of Fame is long overdue. On the occasion of celebrating this site's third birthday, it seems only fitting to explain Sojo's place in the FI pantheon and to formally recognize his 2001 Futility Infielder of the Year award.

Anyway, I want to thank everybody -- family, friends, fellow bloggers, writers and readers -- who has helped me with advice, encouraged me to keep going, or just showed up to read what I have to say day after day. Maintaining this site for the past three years has changed my life in ways I never imagined it would, and for that I'm eternally grateful.