My main concern at this point is whether I ever update the site, though I really have no reason to worry, because who cares. The other concern is how much it overlaps with my other journal, which I never update anyway, unless a friend harasses me about it. So, at least at first, there might be some pushing and shoving to see how far each site's sphere of influence goes.
This is going to be a public site, and I don't like to use names on a public site. What with the Google and the like, it's just too easy for everyone to find everything. Not to mention they really do deserve privacy. At the same time, it's hard to use fake names, even though I'm pretty sure in a few weeks I'll have a text file as a reference for who has what fake name. I'm not systematic enough to go with the Trials of Chastity guy's method of giving each girl a letter and a number.
So, maybe this site will stay pretty tame, and the other will be where I rant about girls. Frankly, that could be in everyone's best interest.
You might be wondering what any of this has to do with baseball. Though since no one is reading this, you probably aren't. This blog isn't just about baseball. I'm going to write about everything that's of interest to me. I think there's a reason that baseball is the national past time, that there are great movies and books about it, and that it captures the public's imagination. It's a romantic game, and more than a lot of sports, I think it's character-driven.
Of course there are winning shots by Jordan, amazing field goals or passes in football with no time on the clock, etc., in other sports. But I don't think any sport quite sets up moments of greatness like baseball. You can't run down the clock, and you always get your chance. There's always a ninth inning opportunity for someone to do something great.
I love sabermetrics (the statistical analysis of baseball), I read box scores every day, I just finished watching Baseball Tonight, I play fantasy baseball, and it's all just sports geek stuff. But I don't think it's just meaningless. I think there's something overarcing and philosophical about the game, and that's part of what I want to do with this blog.
Why I mentioned using people's names earlier is because I feel something similar about girls. Girls aren't just good looking or not, nice or not, available or not. I think of them as philosophical microcosms. What do guys talk about with regards to girls? Beauty, truth, emotion, happiness. Or at least, that's my experience. Baseball shares a lot of characteristics with that. Searching for truth in increasingly-complicated box scores, the beauty of the plays.
I'm also going to write about random anecdotes that I pick up from the books I'm reading and the classes I'm taking. Montaigne's books are formed largely from margin notes he made in other books. He kept journals of his comments on things he was learning and reading. I think that makes sense, particularly in our information age. Maybe I can remember some of it more clearly now, and it'll be conveniently archived with a handy search engine.
So yeah, this has been a very longwinded way of saying what this blog is going to be about. Baseball, girls, books, small items that have greater significance, I hope. I don't want to set this up as anything amazingly academic and deep, though. Half the time it'll probably be me ranting about how a guy in one of my fantasy leagues is carrying three catchers who can't hit and how he's a moron. But I wanted to explain that this blog should definitely have a variety of stuff and that I'm not just obsessed with the minutia of these subjects, but that I think philosophically in terms of them, and that it's meaningful to me. So yeah. That's the mission statement.