Baby Steps

Fourteen hours and six entries into this glorious experiment, and I realize I haven't said boo about who I am or why I'm doing this, so I guess I'll take a minute to explain myself. I'm a 21 year old college student from Northern Virginia, though I'm currently finishing up my Senior year at a New York City school, where I'm enjoying the reactions of Met fans to the Milledge deal.

Baseball and I have a very short history together. I played little league of course, and we used to go to a good number of Orioles games when I was a kid, but that trip always sucked, so we eventually gave up our tickets. And then I stopped caring about that slow, boring game of baseball. When it was announced that the Expos would be moving to DC, however, I decided to take an interest, and quickly found myself totally engrossed in the world of baseball; screaming, cheering, and then crying through that inaugural season. My first favorite player, when I returned to baseball was Esteban Loaiza, because he started out as a Free Agent in all the baseball video games and I could sign him to my team. Imagine my delight when I realized he was actually on it in reality, too. After the 2005 season, I learned my first hard baseball lesson: the players you love don't always stick around as long as you'd like them to. I learned that again when Ryan Church, who had taken the crown after Loaiza went to Oakland, was traded last week.

But since 2005, I've come to live, breathe, and think baseball. When forced to make the decision between eating and buying a season ticket plan on a college student's budget, I have had to hesitate, and I'm still not sure I made the right choice, but the new $5-10 seats in Nationals Park are cheering me up. I started blogging because I feel like, as a new fan, I've got some different ideas than a lot of the bloggers and writers out there, and I might as well write them down. I'm not a big fan of the Joe Morgan style of yelling about intangibles, but I've also read Moneyball with enough perspective to realize that for all of the theorizing and number crunching, Jeremy Brown still sucks. A lot.

No, he's not selling jeans. But he's buying them at Dave's Discount Big and Tall.

I'm also not as concerned with the personalities of our players as many others in the blogosphere. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to condone any of the reprehensible actions that some of these guys have taken part in, but on the other hand, some of the legends of baseball were huge assholes, and if Lastings Milledge's asking price to ensure that I'm wearing a Washington Nationals: World Series Champions shirt in several years is that he's got to cut a really vulgar rap album along the way, well, I hope it's on iTunes. If Elijah Dukes' price is that he has to threaten some more of his kids, then I hope he gets hit by a meteor.

So there's me, and this is my blog.