Welcome To The Least-Visited Sports Blog In History

In an era where streaming video content pours across your social media whether you want it to or not, where score updates flash on your phones, when you can hide the details of today's game on the Roku until you're good and ready to get drunk and watch it, I've decided to start a baseball blog, like it's 1999. 

Why?

I'm a semi-famous writer. That's about as significant as my teenage son saying "they know me at the gas station because I buy Icees there so often." Once upon a time, it might have mattered, but it doesn't anymore. No one knows and no one cares but me. 

I recently submitted an entry to an open staff-writer call at my favorite Los Angeles Dodgers fan site. I figured the fact that I've published 10 books and the fact that I was published in Best American Sportswriting, for a Slate essay chosen by Michael Lewis, of all people, might carry a little weight. Maybe I'd finally get to fulfill my lifelong dream of writing about my favorite baseball team.

Instead, they hired the usual assortment of guys who like to write about Matt Kemp's UZR or whatever and how it indicates that Matt Kemp might still be a productive outfielder. Instead of writers, they chose coders. While I do believe in advanced metrics, I also believe in entertainment. And writing about Logan Forsythe's fWAR is not entertaining. 

But not only wasn't I selected, I wasn't a finalist. I didn't even get a rejection email. Nothing. Bupkus. Denied. Like a former Major Leaguer attempting one last shot at Spring Training, I was sent away to stock boxes at Home Depot or whatever the hell it is I do these days.

But instead of saying "Why don't the Dodgers love me anymore?", I said "Fuck it. I'm going to start my own baseball blog." I put a Facebook post up complaining about how I got rejected by the Dodgers Digest. It received a decent amount of sympathy, and more than one comment saying "you should do your own site." So I did. Here it is: A fan's perspective, only lightly statistical, on rooting for and watching what has been more or less the best team in baseball over the past decade, even though, like me, they have won nothing. That's the Dodgers for you. Always the best man, never the groom. 

In an attempt to mock more than one baseball team, and in an attempt to do as little work as possible, I've teamed up with my high-school friend Jason, who will be covering the obnoxious Arizona Diamondbacks and their terrible shopping mall of a ballpark, and with a guy named Avery from my Facebook page, who I've never met even though he lives in the same town as me. He will be covering the San Francisco Giants, the living embodiment of Satan's hordes on Earth. Here is a scene from their most recent Spring Training game: 

Jason has, in the past, written for The Phoenix New Times, so I know he can put together an entertaining sentence about urban bicycling, which is exactly the same as watching baseball in that it goes nowhere fast. I'm going to trust that Avery can do the same, given that he is a Giants fan, and Giants fans tend to be literate and evil.

We're currently looking for people foolish enough to cover the Colorado Rockies, a baseball team that requires you to believe in Jesus to play for them, and the San Diego Padres, the worst baseball team of all time. The Padres assignment might be kind of fun, as you'll be able do things like make fun of great Padres throughout history like Ed Spezio.

We are not Dodgers Digest, so pretty much the first applications to come in will be the ones that we accept, assuming they display basic knowledge of grammar and punctuation rules. This actually rules out most Padres fans, but we can hope.

So welcome to the NL Worst, a mostly stats-free carnival of shit-talking and fan-based whining, which is what Internet sports writing was before sentences like "Barnes — rate-wise — is the 2nd-best framer in baseball. Overall, he was eighth, but that was in just 2,931 framing chances." As Mr. Spock would say:

I'll let Jason and Avery introduce themselves, and then after that I'll chime in with my Dodgers season preview, which will be almost almost entirely based on me watching 12 Spring Training innings of Dodgers baseball, six of them pitched by Clayton Kershaw, on MLB League Pass. Get ready, this is going to be huge. 

Best,
Neal Pollack