My Evolving Blogging Identity Crisis

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?

Introducing Amortizing Ryan Howard

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!

2011 NLDS Phillies vs Cardinals

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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!”

In Praise of the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies

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!

In Praise of Local Coffee

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What’s your favorite local­ly-roast­ed bean? I’ve tried three recent­ly myself: old favorite La Colombe as well as new jacks Green Street and ReAn­i­ma­tor. Is it blas­phe­my to say I pre­fer La Colombe?

It may be my per­son­al pref­er­ence, but no mat­ter how much cof­fee I brew, I just find that La Colombe has a bet­ter, rounder fla­vor than the others. 

Am I miss­ing some­thing? Are their local beans that blow your socks off? Drop me a line in the comments.