Ramsayings

I know I’m the last person on Earth to admit this, but I’m in love with the iPad. Strike that: I’m in love with my wife’s iPad, which I gifted her two years ago. At first i thought my iPhone was all I needed. I started playing with it Thursday night and now it’s on my lap nonstop. I’m writing this post on it!

Favorite app? Currently obssessed with Flipboard. Really changes the way I engage my feeds and browse the web. It’s fun again!

What am I looking forward to? Reading. I’m desperate to embrace digital books because I can’t shoehorn another in our modest home. Hope this screen is addictive for reading as it is everything else.

If you have an iPad and are a fan, let me know what your favorite apps are in the comments!

Here we go again. No sooner do I announce Amortizing Ryan Howard then I change the name (and buy the URL) for High Leverage Inning. (Hey, it’s live!)

This isn’t the first time this has happened and it probably won’t be the last. Throughout my bloggy tenure I’ve struggled with titles and platforms and channels for this or that type of content. Most of it falls under the category of, um, “flaking out.” Even when I’m putting off writing about this or that, it’s really hard to determine what to put where. For example, we had a great trip to Meadowbrook Farm this weekend. I posted pics to Instagram and Facebook and tweeted about it a few times, too. Do I write a blog post wrapping it all up? So confusing! Most of all it’s about how much importance do I assign my personal stuff when I’m always thinking about ways to improve what I’m doing with Comcast Voices. It’s the quiet struggle of the social media professional.

See, for those of us who started writing about stuff online in the ’90s, blogging is a really specific thing, i.e. posting things to a weblog such as this one. We have different names for everything else, whether it’s tweeting or tumbling or whatever. I see blogging as a species of writing, whereas newcomers may see blogging as the genus and platforms like Facebook and other social networks as the species. Ultimately it’s all content sharing, but for those of us who enjoy writing, even when we don’t write enough, we have these pangs where we admit we’ve neglected our blogs.

Starting today I’m going to try to establish some sense of what goes where. I probably won’t stick to it, but I’m definitely going to try.

I’ll blog about whatever passes my fancy here. That will continue to be things that mostly pertain to family stuff, as well as the occasional personal tech how-to’s and music-related things that grab my attention. Current obsession? Instapaper! Right now I’m sifting through articles to help me decide if it’s better than iOS 5′s Reading List. I think it is, but it’s all a matter of workflow for me. Fewer clicks = better experience.

High Leverage Inning will be where I compile all the baseball-related items that catch my eye. I’ve tried Tumblr more than once and now I finally feel comfortable with the medium. Also, if you want to be a Tumblr rockstar, here’s a tip: tumble about sports. From what I can tell it’s a small subset of the greater Tumblr community and the folks who are doing it well are really great follows.

Phew. Feels good to get all of that off my chest. Have to say that the evolution from long-form blogging to microblogging can be a tough pill to swallow. I love Twitter and Tumblr, but few things are as satisfying as really spilling words on the virtual page.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Let me know how I’m doing in the comments, okay?

Because the world needed another baseball blog. You can find it here, where I will be Tumbling about all manner baseball stuff, whether it’s Phillies or not. (And, yes, this is my umpteenth stab at Tumblr. This could stick only because I really like reading and writing and thinking about baseball.) If you can recommend anyone on Tumblr who is a thinking person’s baseball fan, or even someone who makes unbelievably hilarious .gifs, let me know!

Didn’t start or end pretty, but I can honestly say that what happened in between the first and ninth innings were truly inspired baseball. Halladay dominated, the offense erupted and Charlie went wild with the rally towel.

It was an absurdly fun night at the ballpark, punctuated by the lone Cards fan in our row leaving when it started getting ugly.

Singing “High Hopes” as we left the ballpark is so satisfying. “10 mas!”

Never in my life did I believe that the Phillies would be the sort of dominant team fans link to the Yankees and Red Sox. The sort of team that “buys” championships. The sort of team that players want to join, even if it means taking a pay cut to do it. The kind of team that can win 100+ games and dominate the competition.

Want to know a secret? I really thought 2011 might be a letdown year for the Phillies.

Acquiring pitching is great, but there’s only so much pitchers can do to help win games. I feared that our aging core players, notably Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, would make us vulnerable to the sort of power outages we’ve faced in the past and that the replacement parts wouldn’t be up to the task. I was wrong.

It was amazing to watch this team cut through the opposition no matter who they put on the field. I saw Michael Martinez hit a three-run homer. I feel like that encapsulated what a rarefied season this was for a team whose expectation is success. On the eve of the playoffs, I think I’m one of those who thinks that anything less than a World Series championship will be a disappointment.

The last two seasons have been heart-wrenching for Phillies fans. 2009 ended just short of repeat title. 2010 was cut short by a Giants team that caught fire. Where will 2011 leave us? Will we fall short again, or will we run roughshod over a field that is probably the strongest we’ve faced since 2009?  Needless to say I’m excited to see what unfolds.

Dream match-ups? Phillies versus Brewers in the NLCS. Would love a rematch of the ’08 NLDS, which probably featured the most exciting game I’ve ever seen in the postseason firsthand, with the ’09 NLCS clincher against the Dodgers a close second. (Saw the 10-2 laugher against the Rays in the ’08 World Series. It was satisfying, but not exactly thrilling.) Want to see Phillies-Tigers in the World Series. I’m a chauvinist for clubs that have history to complement a dazzling rotation topped by one of my favorite AL players, Justin Verlander. (A little secret: I fell in love with the Tigers early in ’06 and have followed them since.)

I’ll be at the ballpark Saturday with my family, excited for another round of postseason baseball. Wish me luck as I run on no sleep for a month!