Comments on: MLB blog city

MLB blog city

mattbucher — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:33:17 -0800

Torre's Stories. As part of their ever-expanding blog empire, Major League Baseball has invited Joe Torre to take up the noble habit of blogging. He joins the likes of Kevin Slowey, Bengie Molina, and Mark DeRosa as guys who apparently have time to blog between games.

Also: Andre Ethier has a great blog called Dining with 'Dre about restaurants. Underperforming Jeff Francoeur has Frenchy's Forum. Injured C.J. Wilson writes Scorpion Tales. Some of these are updated more than others, but Torre is off to a great start! No RSS, but use Page2RSS as a workaround.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:48:21 -0800

Torre is surprisingly entertaining so far, but "Dining with 'Dre" is by far the greatest thing linked here. Who wouldn't want to hear about a promising young outfielder's experiences with shabu-shabu, complete with pictures? No discussion of blogging ballplayers is complete without a link to Curt Schilling. And Doug Glanville has had some nice pieces in the Times recently.

By: felix betachat

felix betachat — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:48:56 -0800

So I guess after it becomes clear that Torre can't make use of the talent he's got, MLB will sign Joe Girardi to blog in his place?

By: cell divide

cell divide — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:53:33 -0800

After the Dodgers' games are shown locally, there's a Torre's story segment on the post-game show almost every night. Sometimes they're actually good stories, along the lines of remembering the time that [insert hall of fame baseball player here] did [something funny/strange/amazing] but often the "stories" are closer to "I remember one time, our plane was delayed, and we ended up getting a couple hours of sleep. We won the game though". Great story, Torre!

By: dpx.mfx

dpx.mfx — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:06:29 -0800

Um, Torre's stories has an RSS feed. Also, it made me laugh. I've never had much of a feeling one way or another about Torre, but he comes off kinda huggable in his blog so far.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:09:17 -0800

Fascinating.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:10:23 -0800

Phil Hughes' blog is pretty boring. Pat Neshek's blog is a favorite among baseball nerd types.

By: SpiffyRob

SpiffyRob — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:14:14 -0800

First up, though, I'll be figuring out this blogging thing since I'm a little behind the times. For example, I saw one of those little candy Valentine's hearts printed with "LOL" and thought it was a typo right up until I started reading about blogs and Web acronyms. I mean, WTF(udge), right? Then there are "web smileys" like ;-) and :-( which frankly make me a bit >:-P (I just made that one up). But live and learn. More than amusing anecdotes, I'm really excited for Joe Torre to "make up" the entire history of emoticons and abbreviations. In honor of this, I have invented my own. (Z(:-)--I--(3 <--- Nationals fan without pants. WTFudge indeed.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:14:47 -0800

Um, Torre's stories has an RSS feed. My bad. The feed is buried way down on the bottom right column. I'm so used to looking for the RSS icon in the FF URL bar.

By: peachfuzz

peachfuzz — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:16:43 -0800

Oh, my god. This is adorable, and completely at odds with my private construction of What Joe Torre Is Like. He always looks like he's got a mouthful of thumbtacks, but this blog is really kind of delightful so far.

By: dances_with_sneetches

dances_with_sneetches — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:32:12 -0800

Okay, I'll be the cynic here. They hired a PR person to ghost write all of these. That person is paid to think like a teddy bear version of Torre and run whatever s/he writes past Torre before posting it. In Espy's Almanac of Word at Play he describes his job of ghostwriting for celebrities for their short pieces in Reader's Almanac and the fun of getting into their heads.

By: peachfuzz

peachfuzz — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:33:10 -0800

But SpiffyRob, don't you believe that he believes, absolutely, that he invented furrowed eyebrow emoticon guy? And is kind of proud of it? I just checked out Andre Ethier's blog, and that's totally worth reading too. He's just so...earnest, very serious about loving food and eating only what he likes. This made me laugh: "...tapas that everyone raves about. I personally didn't see the big deal about them. I am going to start a new wave and from now on, start calling them tapatizers."

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:48:09 -0800

Anything that humanizes these guys is great for baseball. We're at a point now where players can only hurt themselves by being interesting in front of sportswriters, and so when anyone says anything beyond the usual "just trying to have a plan up there" it gets chewed up over a four-day news cycle, as with Jimmy Rollins recently daring to make the crushingly obvious comment that Philly fans like to boo, and that some players don't like that. Not every blog is going to be great/interesting, but at least we get to know players a bit better.

By: clearly

clearly — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:50:09 -0800

I want an unedited blog that takes dictation of George Steinbrenner's stream of consciousness. I'd imagine it would go something along the lines of... @#$%^ #$%^&*( Jeter, !@#$%^& hit the #$%^& ball! I pay you #$%^&* 200 + million #$%^&* dollars and the @#$%^&*(*&$ Rays are 10 games up on you @#$%*. Mmm Cheesesteak. @#$% your #$%^&@* pinstripes, pussies!

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:57:10 -0800

Here's an interesting tidbit about LA culture. It's not just a TV cliché: People really DO carry pocket dogs around with them wherever they go. I have no idea where you'd put these little yip-yaps when you go to the restroom, or even why they're such a hot accessory. Joe Torre just became my favorite major league manager for that.

By: netbros

netbros — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:02:26 -0800

His State Farm commercial is pretty endearing too.

By: felix betachat

felix betachat — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:03:02 -0800

I'd imagine it would go something along the lines of... @#$%^ #$%^&*( Jeter, !@#$%^& hit the #$%^& ball! I pay you #$%^&* 200 + million #$%^&* dollars and the @#$%^&*(*&$ Rays are 10 games up on you @#$%*. Mmm Cheesesteak. @#$% your #$%^&@* pinstripes, pussies! You forgot "...gaaaa....^horses!....%&@#!!..."

By: slackdog

slackdog — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:31:25 -0800

I got to go to Yankee Stadium back in 2000 on a very ill-deserved press pass (seeing as I was not technically a member of the sporting press at the time), and spent the a lot of the pre-game in the dugout with Torre - talked to him a bit and sort of observed him and I have to say his blog goes right along with what I witnessed that day. Just a really nice guy all the way around. Nothing negative to say about anyone. First class guy! As far as I could tell.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:14:12 -0800

No discussion of blogging ballplayers is complete without a link to Curt Schilling. Same with discussions about goatse, actually.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:17:20 -0800

And I know this post is about baseballers blogging, but I have to drop a shout out to Marshawn Lynch (Bills RB) for his blog.