| 23 September 2009
Note: I'm on vacation until the end of next week, so I won't really have the time to do the regular blog postings. But to keep you all interested - and to continue to introduce any new readers to some of the Wezen-Ball archives (not to mention to re-introduce Google to the new URL of some of my more popular posts) - I've decided to fill the time by Archive Diving. I wish I could give you better, more up-to-the-minute content, but I just can't promise that. I'll try to check in. I hope you find something worth (re-)reading in the meantime.
Here's the post that got me started. At some point last November, I thought it might wise to start centralizing any random baseball posts that I put around the web (most of them at the time at Bill James Online). In December, I bought a copy of the 1981 Sporting News Baseball Preview Guide to add to my collection. As I was looking through it, I found a great article with a great premise: predicting what will happen in baseball in the Year 2000, which was still 20 years away. Here's the articles introduction:
"One thing you can bet on: the green that will continue to transform the game the most is mint-green, not grass-green. And, considering the stampede for green at all levels of the game in 1981, you almost can envision three leagues, at least six divisions and maybe nine, tiers of playoffs, a World Series with Japan and Latin America, 7-foot pitchers, $3,000,000-a-year stars, 10 or so men to a side, metal bats, rabbit balls, monster promotional give-aways every night, network control of schedules and maybe even of players' contracts, and $25 tickets if all the above don't work."
I was pretty happy with how the post came out, but I was surprised at how much people liked it. Craig at ShysterBall linked to it, but he wasn't the only one. The guys at Baseball Think Factory and River Ave. Blues also sent it some love... and then Rob Neyer. It was a pretty exciting two or three days for someone who had little to no interest in blogging regularly. Of course, once it became clear to me that there were some people who liked what I was writing, I just had to keep going. And I've been doing it pretty steadily ever since. I think it'll last.
So why not revisit it? Here you go: "Baseball in the Year 2000: Predictions from 1981". Enjoy!
