It’s hard to believe, but today marks exactly four years since I first sat down and created ‘The Unbiased MLB Fan’. In some ways, it feels as if I’ve been blogging forever, as it has truly become a large part of my life. But in other ways, though, it seems like just yesterday that I began writing what has now developed into hundreds of posts. Time certainly has a way of flying along.
Creating a blog about baseball was something I never envisioned myself doing. When I first started writing this blog, it wasn’t really because I wanted to share my opinions of baseball with the world — I didn’t know a lot about it at the time, so I didn’t have very strong opinions — but mostly because I knew several people who had a blog, and I wanted one too. That was the driving force behind its creation.
But through writing this blog over the years, I feel that I have grown as a writer, a person, and — more than anything — a baseball fan. By blogging about the sport, I have turned into one of the most passionate baseball fans I know, constantly following the latest story lines and various baseball topics. I may not write about every single one, but odds are that if it’s a major baseball story, I’ve heard about it (including the 7-year, 210 million dollar contract Max Scherzer was given by the Nationals on Monday).
Initially, I was sporadically writing about various topics from around baseball, but none of the posts really focused too heavily on actually facts and statistics. They revolved around my favorite players, my favorite moments from the week, etc. Nothing that would really grab people’s attention all that much. But as time passed, I slowly turned this blog into an outlet with two main purposes: to inform the reader about the latest baseball news, and to provide myself with a place to give my opinions to whoever cared to hear them. I feel that is what this blog has become for the most part.
Each of the past two years, I’ve thrown together a list of posts on January 20th (this blog’s anniversary date) with a link and brief description regarding what the post was about and why I felt it was important. This year, however, I didn’t want to do exactly the same thing. So instead of a list, I decided to put together a brief discussion of the past four years, with most of my effort being put into the most recent blogging year (2014).
Kicking off with January 20, 2011, when I published my first post, I wrote about who I was and what this blog was planned to be about. If you take the time to read it you’ll likely notice that my first post was terrible. While I still make writing mistakes to this day (I’m sure there are several in this particular blog post), I like to think that I’ve come a long way from that first post. I sure hope I have. But even with my inexperience with blogging “way” back then, I still managed to come out as the 35th most viewed MLBlog from 2011, which was pretty remarkable to me at the time.
When the 2012 blogging year rolled around, I began an attempt to improve my blog posts as much as I could from the previous year. I was just beginning to become an avid baseball fan, and wanted to put some of my newly found knowledge into each and every post. It must have worked, because not only did I finish out the year ranking 17th overall in terms of blog views for the year, but in July of that year, I received an all expense paid trip to the 2012 State Farm Home Run Derby in Kansas City. That by far is the greatest perk I’ve ever received from this blog, and nothing will likely ever top it. But, I suppose, you never know.
The following year, in 2013, I made a list of resolutions for the first time that I was going to try to keep throughout the blogging year (I posted the same type of entry a couple weeks ago) and was able to stick to most of them — including one of getting more views than the previous year. By doing so, I was able to make it my most successful blogging year to that point, making a jump in the year end rankings up to 8th overall for views.
But despite the large jump in ranking, I still felt I could do better. After amassing just over 75,000 views, I set out to get more than that in 2014, and I was once again able to reach my goal. Recording a few hundred views over 80,000 for the year — including over 1,200 on a single day back in May, the most ever in a single day for me — 2014 was my best year to this point as far as views go. However, I also feel it was my best year to date in terms of blog content, as I wrote about a lot of interesting things throughout the year.
First of all, back in February, I posted one of my favorite interviews I’ve every conducted. Being on 2013 first overall draft pick, Mark Appel, the interview was the highest drafted player I’ve every interviewed, and it was truly amazing to get such fantastic answers from a player of Appel’s caliber.
But things didn’t stop there in terms of good blog content and a fun year. In July of 2014, I had the privilege of attending Minor League Baseball’s biggest events: the 2014 Triple-A Home Run Derby and All-Star game. I blogged about both, but the one I did on the All-Star game was the one I enjoyed writing the most, and therefore the one I linked.
As far as other baseball news topics are concerned from my most recent year, one of my favorite posts to put together in 2014 was the entry I wrote about Derek Jeter’s final home game, and the miraculous events that surrounded it. With Jeter being one of my favorite players of all time, seeing him finish out his final game in New York with such amazing fashion was incredible.
Rounding out my blogging year, I posted an entry on the first day of December regarding my then recent trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As I discussed in the post, it was the second time I had ever traveled to Cooperstown, but the first time I ever made it inside the Hall of Fame. To say I was impressed with my time there would be an understatement. It’s truly a place everyone should visit at least once.
In conclusion, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this blog going — my overall schedule is busier this year than it has been in the history of this blog — but I’m going to do my best to make it last as long as possible. It’s something that I don’t want to give up (or plan to give up) until I absolutely have to.
‘The Unbiased MLB Fan’ Fast Facts
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Total number of words written to this point: 294,116
- Total number of posts: 459
- Average number of words per post: 641
The Unbiased MLB Fan 