On June 6th 2007, just over five years ago, I wrote a short blog entry titled “A-rod’s 9th inning performance“. That was my first contribution to the now-defunct Baseball-Reference.com blog.
More than 2,000 posts later (between the B-R blog, the temporary home of High Heat Stats over at Blogspot, and its permanent home right here) I have decided to hang it up and retire from baseball writing. Even as I write that–it’s not a full retirement. See below for more information.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve gotten to do some really fun things. Aside from working with the great folks who run Sports Reference (Sean and Neil mainly) and the numerous fantastic writers I’ve rubbed shoulders with for each blog, I’ve had the opportunity to write pieces for the New York Times, USA Today’s baseball preview issue, and appear on a local ESPN radio affiliate. I got to visit MLB Network’s headquarters and studios.
Perhaps the thing that has brought me the most joy is the gradual development of a loyal audience. My fellow writers each deserve as much credit for that as I do. If you go back and look at that A-rod post, it received zero user comments. Most of the posts from the first couple of years received fewer than 5 comments, and more often than not, it was Raphy or me commenting on each other’s posts. Flash forward, and now most posts on this blog get quite a few responses, with just about all of them containing some useful information or opinion. That’s an amazing and wonderful thing. And while I love sharing this space with so many like-minded people, it’s actually our differences that make this place so great. (After all, we can agree on how much Joe Carter sucks for only so long…)
Going forward:
- This blog will remain open and all the other authors will continue to publish on whatever schedule they choose. I will keep footing the bill to keep the blog open even though we don’t get nearly enough in the way of donations to cover costs or pay our writers.
- You can still reach me at my email addressed (posted in the right sidebar) for any issues–admin, contributions, etc.
- I will be keeping a Twitter presence (@HighHeatStats) although at a lower volume than before. You can still expect to see daily tweets there.
- I will finish off the Mount Rushmore post series, so those are still coming and will be published here.
- I will continue to write the occasional odd post, but I don’t expect that to be even as often as 1 post per week.
- I will also continue to do some outside work with other publications, as well as book reviews. I remain available to do guest spots in print and live media.
So this isn’t really goodbye. I’m just taking myself out of the lineup and moving to the end of the bench. I’ll be like Pete Rose as a player-manager, overseeing things and on rare occasions inserting myself into the action…only I have a much better haircut, and I don’t plan to bet on any of the action here.
