Ramsayings

Nothing quite as excruciating as watching your team lose a star outfielder to a sorry team within the division — for unreasonably big bucks, mind — while watching them haplessly pursue bargain bin replacements like Jeff Francoeur, Matt Diaz, George Sherrill and Dennys Reyes. Would’ve been adding insult to injury if we tried to add any of those guys even in a platoon. Can’t rightly tell if it makes it hurt more to hear the Phillies bandied about as being in on Cliff Lee and Zack Greinke or if that’s just part of a push to make guys like me feel better about a team that really has no choice but to stand pat this offseason and hope things go a little differently in 2011.

Will say that the Nats being big spenders really warms my heart. Love that the Fish are being aggressive, too. The NL East doesn’t get enough credit for being the hornet’s nest it is.

Lastly, Selig really does need to expand the league to include the mystery team that gets cited any time talks heat up with a free agent. Craig Calcaterra has been writing about this over at Hardball Talk for a bit. The tweets coming out of Orlando have been positively hilarious. Have to say that the rumors definitely keep me engaged with baseball during what is otherwise a very slow offseason.

The baseball offseason torments me. While I appreciate the postseason awards — congrats to Roy Halladay on his Cy Young Award — I find my thoughts turn to the likes of Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson, Gavvy Cravath and Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Fortunately, I have company. My friend and coworker Dan McQuade of Philadelphia Will Do is loaning me an Ed Delahanty biography! Cannot wait to read about a troubled ballplayer who died at Niagara Falls. I’m fascinated by Big Ed’s story and I love thinking about the dead-ball era, when baseball was a grinding game of bunts, steals and dirty pitches, to say nothing of rogue leagues and labor strife.

I also nearly joined the Society for American Baseball Research yesterday. I told you it was getting bad!

Were you one of the poor souls spazzing out over Kanye’s 10.0 from Pitchfork? How perfectly 2002 of you. If you’re looking for more grist for the mill, look no further than Jeff Weiss’ excellent My Beautiful Dark Twisted Family roundtable, in which several critics offer their thoughts on what most people seem to believe is the album of the year. (I’m inclined to agree with most people.)

Not good enough? Jeff and his friends are really, really funny.

If you’re like me, you can’t wait to read Keith Richards’ memoir, Life. But before you do, be sure to read Bill Wyman’s fascinating “Please Allow Me to Correct a Few Things” at Slate first. Stop in at his blog, Hitsville, too.

Yesterday I started my new job as Comcast’s chief blogger. Now I’ve had some fun with social media so far in my career and have had a really great time getting people excited about bringing the A’s back to Philadelphia, but I have very little in the way of what you may call deep background on social media practices.

My take: I feel like I have the trickiest part–writing–down cold. I have a solid understanding of what stories are best told through text and which are better explained by video, thanks to my tenure at comcast.net. I know that people want regular content and they have expectations around how it’s delivered. That’s understood.

What I have questions about are best practices in the social web. If you can recommend reading either on- or offline, I’d appreciate it. Leave a note in the comments or @ me on Twitter. If you have favorite blogs that deal specifically in this, feel free to share those as well. My Google reader feels a little empty after I 86′d oh so many music blogs.

Don’t think I’m not doing some heavy lifting myself. I’m finding Kristina Halvorson’s work and the Brain Traffic blog a very useful font of info and links. I’ve also subscribed to several recommended company blogs, ranging from Southwest Airlines to Google’s Official blog. Love how they read!