Category: About YFSF

It’s a hot, hot day in July heading towards All-Star week and I have chosen to sit in an air-conditioned room, with the intent of making what is now near 20 years of writing at YFSF/yanksfan-soxfan something that can be retained for the posterity of the efforts of so many who took part for years. It’s a very small part of the story of baseball, but it is thousands of posts. Hundreds of thousands of comments.

Passion, history, vitriol as well as commiseration all in a big baseball soup. Hopes expressed of one more important victory and sometimes rewarded but more often shunted to the side as the long-running saga of the story of baseball and the special relationship that people form with The Greatest Sport Ever Invented continues.

I can’t say that this a relaunch of yfsf.org, but at least there is a bit of work being done to the foundation and framing, and a new coat of paint. Hopefully it can be a resource for all the analysis, documentation, and humor that was generated by all the generous people who made the effort to contribute their thoughts. If you have a problem with how things are working, you can email me.. attackgerbil at yfsf dot org

In the spirit of the Marvelous summer, maybe I should have titled this post Glove and Chunder.

We’re 10! Yes, ten years ago today, YF and SF started up this little corner of the baseball universe. Thanks for spending the time to read and write with us, celebrate and suffer, argue and exalt The Greatest Game Ever Invented. Take a look around the Archives.

If you are reading this, congratulations! You are on the new server. You may want to create an account if you haven’t already.

This post is not about a free agent contract, or cash considerations sent in order to assume a bad Omar Minaya signing. It is, rather, about the number of page views this site has received over the past six years since we moved this blog to Typepad – we passed the 3M threshold sometime in the last month.

We fully realize that YF and I were solely responsible for the first half million, but nonetheless we are very proud to have had so many people stop by the site and join the fray. Many thanks to all who have participated and to our esteemed co-authors as well.

Onwards to 4,000,000!

So my last post around these parts was April 20.

Sorry about that.

I could give you a host of pretty good reasons — new job; two kids 2 years old and under; the Red Sox' generally crappy season; and, frankly, frustrations with the tenor of the debate here, for which I know I shared some of the blame. Probably all that boils down to burnout. Since YF and SF first elevated me from the ranks of Lowly Commenter to Grand Poobah of Posts (it's in the contract) in May 2006, I crafted 1,159 pieces of art threw 1,159 pieces of dung at the wall to see what stuck, or roughly 290 per year. That's a lot of time and energy, probably an unhealthy amount, given that it is just a game and this is just the Internet.

I never stopped following the Red Sox, though doing so as closely as I did before our first daughter was born in July 2008 — and then again before our second was born last November — was obviously impossible. I lurked around SOSH for a while, actually scored a membership thanks to the writing I had done here, decided I didn't feel like paying for the privilege of hanging out with the cool kids, underwent some significant shifts in my personal life, especially regarding how I set priorities, and pretty much unplugged from baseball beyond reading the Boston Globe's Extra Bases blog (I'd be lying if I didn't admit the Sox' lousy year didn't help make that easier).

Yet baseball is something of a drug, and the Red Sox are the pushers, and here I am again. I've always been a sucker for the hot stove season — the rumors, the drama, the hope, imagining five-way trades that would bring Justin Upton and Adrian Gonzalez to Boston simultaneously. You know how it is. I started posting comments on the Extra Bases blog, on the excellent Red Sox Beacon blog, Baseball Think Factory, etc.

Then I thought, "How much more effort would it be to just go back and do the same thing on YFSF?" AG sent me a link he'd posted, asking for my thoughts, and for the first time in months, I checked back in.

Turns out the site somehow hasn't collapsed since I left. And I think I still have some interesting things to say. So we'll see. I can't promise daily posts; in fact, I can pretty much guarantee nondaily posts. But if something catches my eye, I'll come around and post and comment and maybe even get into it a little bit (though not as much). The goal is to be healthy about this. 

I've always been grateful to SF and YF for the opportunity to post here, and I remain so. The game's not over. Let's play some ball.

On the surface, Johnny Damon chose the Detroit Tigers over the Boston Red Sox. But underneath it all, he actually made a different choice. Lee Jenkins gets it. He understands that all things Boston lead back to New York, and, in a way, this site.

He could not feign forgiveness. For the Red Sox front office, these negotiations may never have been personal, but for Damon they were. Despite his carefree persona, he held tight to a grudge, and while Red Sox fans were preparing to let go, he was not. Now, those fans will scorn him all over again, as if he were an outfielder in his prime headed to the Yankees, instead of a designated hitter in his twilight sticking with the Tigers.

Damon claimed that the decision to stay away from Boston was as difficult as the one to leave. In both instances, the Yankees were involved, though this time in a more tangential way. When the Tigers traveled to Yankee Stadium just last week, Damon was given a standing ovation, and he wondered how he would be treated if he were in a Red Sox uniform instead. Although Damon is beloved by his peers, who could not care less that he once left the Red Sox for a richer contract with the Yankees, he still seems concerned with how he is viewed by fans. He could not bear to jeopardize his relationship with a second major following.

By picking Tigers over Red Sox, Damon chose Yankees over Red Sox. If his allegiance were not clear five years ago, it is today.

Ergo, Johnny is ours. Does everyone agree?

A little history for you YFSF devotees. See us as infants here.

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Nick was complaining that the blue was wearing off the Yankee letters, so we’ve got a bit of housekeeping to do. Hopefully it should not affect things for long.

update 1:06p – all done.

Title says it all. Get your latest YFSF posts delivered via Twitter, plus extra bits that maybe don’t make it to the front page. Wondering what we are talking about? John Cleese answers that best (NSFW if your bosses are a bunch of jackasses).

In a stunning coup, the Yankees have traded Phil Franchise and IPK for Cole Hamels, who will bring his devastating change-up to the Bronx.

Nah, that’s not true. Just seeing if you were paying attention. There is a slow change going on with the guts of YFSF. We hope some of these features might actually even work.