Things Change

Chris Needham's recent decision to go emeritus on us has me thinking about blogger longevity. It's a tough business doing this every day, especially considering almost none of us gets paid. Burnout, I imagine, is a constant concern, and at some point you just run out of ways to describe your team's latest disheartening loss, stupid transaction, or insufferable announcers.

Four years ago, Josh Levin of Slate did a survey of "The Best of the Baseball Blogosphere." Setting aside the quality of his choices -- he missed an awful lot of good blogs that existed even in 2004 and some that he did include were questionable -- it's interesting to note just how much has changed in the past four years. A handfull remain. Others have moved or morphed into something else entirely. Some are simply no more. Levin's links:

Rob & Rany on the Royals: Now defunct following hiatuses of various lengths, though Rany still carries the torch;

Redbird Nation: Brian Gunn's Cardinals blog hasn't been active for years;

Big Red C: This Cubs blog has been dark for several years now. Warning: don't follow the redirect from its old blogspot location; I'm still scrubbing the trojans from my click-through to the now-NSFW landing pad;

U.S.S. Mariner: Long one of the best team-specific blogs, Zumsteg and Cameron are still going strong;

Al's Ramblings: a Brewer blog, is still humming;

Yagottabelieve: Appears to have been a Devil Rays blog, but is nowhere to be found today;

Twins Geek : Still exists, but Levin referred to it as being in-house at the Star-Tribune, which it clearly isn't anymore. Same blog, or just the same name?

Seth Speaks: Seth Stoh is still blogging the Twins;

Will Young: Also still firing away.

Aaron Gleeman: Needs no introduction here. His empire includes work at The Hardball Times, Fox Sports, USA Today, Rotoworld, Insider Baseball, and of course, NBC.

Bronx Banter: still exists, though it is now at Baseball Toaster rather than all-baseball.com (which was bought out by MVN several years ago);

Mike's Baseball Rants: Likewise at the Toaster;

Sabernomics: JC Bradbury hasn't gone anywhere, except on book tours and stuff.

Doug Pappas: Sadly, Doug passed away just over a month after Levin's article;

Scott Rex: His prospect ratings at On Deck Baseball is no more, with the URL now going to an aggregator of baseball-related commercial links;

The Transaction Guy: Still happening and, like some other former all-baseball.com sites, is now at successor company MVN;

Baseball News Blog: There's still something going by that name, but it's a very different beast than, and does not appear to be related to, the one Levin was talking about. As far as straight news aggregators go, Ballbug has displaced it in the minds of many (including me);

Score Bard: Score Bard has, like many of the others, evolved into Baseball Toaster, and obviously does far more than poetry these days.

Baseball Widow: The old site is dark. Now this is up. Same widow? I don't think so, because scanning the two sites reveals husbands with different names. Of course, if she is literally a baseball widow, that would make sense.

Management by Baseball: If you had asked me to look at Levin's list and guess which of the blogs he cites is not still humming, I would have said this one, which seeks to dispense daily business lessons based on baseball observations. Shows you what I know, though, because Jeff Angus is still doing it four years later. He has even written a book based on the idea. Of course, someone recently wrote a book adapting the lessons of a murderous dictator to business, so the bar there isn't set all that high.

Tiger Blog: Still roaring.

A mixed bag to be sure. Lessons? Well, the obvious one is that on the Internet, four years may as well be forever. Aside from that, it strikes me that quality endures, because with only one or two exceptions, the ones that are still going were simply better blogs in 2004 than the ones that are not (and the years of experience since have only enhanced that quality).

Personally, I think the baseball blogosphere is still early in its maturation process. New blogs still bloom every spring, only to peter out by Memorial Day. While the team-specific blogs have certainly settled on some established patterns (in-season game recaps, transaction analysis, and off-season historical retrospectives), the general blogs are still all over the map in terms of quality, content, and frequency of posts. There is still so much more to explore online.

And I think that's why I remain excited about doing ShysterBall, even more than a year after firing it up.