1 Year anniversary of Observing Baseball
Wow. I truly cannot believe it has been only a year. When I created this blog last year, it had been a thought brewing in my mind for a few months. When my birthday came around (the night of October 12th/ the morning of October 13th)I figured I would just try something a little out of my comfort zone. I created the blog and named it Observing Baseball just because I like to see past the surface in things and it was going to be a baseball blog. I made the link mateofischer.mlblogs.com, not because I thought I would some day have 100 hits on the site each day, but because the blog was going to be me. More specifically, it was going to be my opinion on baseball. I then wrote the blog’s first entry at 12:52 on the morning of my birthday, the 13th.
October 14- My next entry is still one of the ones I have most pride in where I delved into all the great pitchers that were in the playoffs last year and broke them down showing the world and Ace they may not have considered before.
October 16- After that, the world got its first taste of Mateo Fischer randomness when Cablevision and News Corp engaged in a price negotiation at the Bronx’s expense. By the way, if you actually look carefully at the title of the entry, the blanked out word is actually “freaking” and not the word everyone would think to be blanked out. This is also where I got my first comment.
October 20- My next entry was my first taste of both the ballhawk style of blog entry and ALCS baseball. Thanks to the enormous generosity of my dad, I went on Ebay three days before the game and got us both a ticket for this game. It was one of the most unique experiences I have ever experienced and has really contributed to my entries this year. I am amazed by many things in this entry. First, when I re-read this entry, I was both impressed and disgusted at how quickly I got an entry of that magnitude up and how sloppy my writing is. Secondly, I am amazed by how good some of the pictures were for it being my first time blogging about a game and how random some of the other pictures were. Sure, I still have some random pictures in my entries but in this entry, the time I spent outside the gates had almost as much coverage as the time I spent inside the stadium. It was like I took pictures so I felt the need to use them in the entry.
November 1-30- Here is where I got my first taste of other thing getting in the way of blogging. In both entries, listed here and here, I found myself in the position of having to explain to the readership why I hadn’t been posting entries that often. The problem was that I was too ambitious but in retrospect I wish I would have finished the entries because there were maybe five people reading at this point and so I should have held future readers in mind because looking back on it, it just looks sloppy.
December 19th- This is the point where I realized that I didn’t have that many viewers and so I actually stuck through it and finished the whole entry. Sadly, I did write other entries in December but this is the only one that survived the WordPress conversion. Fortunately, this is another one of those entries I am very proud of. It is completely conspiracy theory but it does make sense when you think about it from the standpoint of a GM (which I aspire to be). The name of the entry is Pure Genius. It deals with the Cliff Lee acquisition by the Phillies last offseason and the moves that, intentionally or unintentionally, made that move possible (I argue that they would have been intentional if I were the GM of the Phillies and imply that Reuben Amaro might have done them intentionally).
January 2-6- New Years Resolution/Revision I initially made all of my all of goals for the 2011 ballhawking season in the New Years Resolution entry. Four days later in the New Years Revision, I went back on these goals because my dad’s test came back and his cancer looked much worse than I had perceived when I wrote the first entry.
January 27- This was one of those entries I am most proud of. When I first read Moneyball, I sort of understood the statistics themselves and how they worked but I didn’t truly understand why they worked better than the usual statistics. This is an explanation to those people in that fuzzy zone that get Sabermetric stats but don’t get why they work better. I will be the first to admit that I would probably do a much better job now of explaining the stats and that this entry is a bit awkward and confusing. The entry is aptly named, Sabermetrics (the explanation).
February 16-April 19- Offseason Recap and Review entries. This stemmed from me looking at things from a GM’s perspective. I just thought to myself that it would be fun to grade how the teams had done in the offseason. Little did I know, it would also be a great tool for communicating with the different fan bases of Mlblogs because I did do all 30 teams.
March 9-30 Fordham Prep Baseball I tried writing about Fordham Prep Baseball because I am already the manager for the team and I could have some insight along with recapping the games. It started with posting the varsity roster on the blog. I then recapped some games but it faded out because there was some criticism as to how I recapped the games and it was just taking up too much time so I stopped writing the entries. I will NOT be resuming this on this blog. If at all I start recapping games, it will be on another blog created specifically for Fordham Prep Baseball, but will most likely not happen.
March 10- In the first week of March, Zack Hample’s “The Baseball” with a subtitle I’d rather not write out, came out. I “Pre”-ordered and several days later on March 8th, it arrived. I then went onto do my first ever book review. I know absolutely nothing about how to review a book. So, I just went over each of the sections and added my own little commentary to go with that particular section. Here is the review in all of its overkilling-ness, The Baseball Book Review.
March 17- This was just a play I had in my mind forever and wanted to get out into the world. I realized that I could put it on my blog and so the Super Bunt became a blog entry. What do you think? Could it actually work?
March 27- I know you are sick of entries that “I am very proud of” but here’s another. The Survey of Adult’s Perception of Baseball is close to, if not the entry I have/will put the most effort into. It is basically me seeing how adults view baseball as a sport through asking my teachers who their favorite players are and why.
April 27- I copied and pasted a research essay I did for English on the moral standard held by baseball throughout the years. I did this by examining who was being let into the Hall of Fame and whether or not they deserved it according to the rules for the BWAA for voting. I looked at Mark McGwire, Ty Cobb, and I believe Pete Rose. The entry was called, Case Study on the Morality in Baseball. It may be a bit drier than you are used to from me because it was for a class but it certainly has some interesting information. You might be surprised by what you find.
May 6- about June I was going to games fairly infrequently as you can see from the distance between blog entries. This was because my dad was in hospice care and I was trying to spend as much time as I could with him after Fordham Prep Baseball ended. He died May, 17, 2011. To show how much I love baseball, I went to a game that night. Granted it got rained out but still.
June 19- August 4 I don’t want to say that I caught fire because that carries the implication that I was overachieving but something certainly clicked for me in all the games between these two points. Coincidentally, (this is sarcasm) I was not in New York for any part except for but one game of this hot streak. The schedule consisted of: June 15-16 Nationals Park, June 24 AT&T Park, July 2 Tropicana Field (where I snagged my 100th ball), July 4-6 Turner Field, July 7-9 Sun Life Stadium, July 18 Citi Field, July 22-24 Camden Yards, and July 27-29 Nationals Park.
August 4- September 23 I went on an even colder streak than the last one was hot. Not coincidentally, there were a whole bunch of Citi Field games. The streak was so bad I actually ended my consecutive games streak at 56. I think my average for this stretch was a little over 1 ball a game. This included a trip to the Midwest where I wasn’t as prepared as I would like for games because I was visiting like 10,000 colleges.
Now we are pretty much up to date. Like I said, it was a crazy year. This blog started out as just something to do but it has evolved into something so much greater. I have been able to be in communication with so many more people because of it and now can’t imagine my life without it. It has even affected my college search so much as that I am actually considering Journalism as a serious major. Last year, I would have gone on a hunger strike before I applied to a school for Journalism. This year, I am actually applying to Northwestern, the top Journalism school in the country.
Observing Baseball 