AaronGleeman.com

I am able to find out how many people visit this site every hour, every day, every month.

More interestingly, I am able to see how they get here.

Most people arrive by way of some sort of "bookmark" (or "favorite place" for you AOL users).

They have stumbled across this site at some point in the past and liked it enough to make a point to save the address and come back again.

This fact pleases me to no end.

I like the idea that there are people out there that stop by here every single day by simply clicking on something they have chosen to save to their computer.

I imagine that many people stop here at about the same time every day, while sitting at the same place.

Perhaps upon waking up in the morning before school, maybe during their lunch break at work or possibly before going to bed at night.

The possibilities are endless, at least in my imagination.

While many visitors to this site come because they have made an effort to do so on a regular basis, others do so purely by accident.

Each and every day, dozens of people come here by way of "links" on other baseball websites.

One of those silly Canadians from the "Batter's Box" might enjoy something I write and make mention of it on their site.

100 of their readers will head this way right away, many of them for the first time.

John Bonnes from "TwinsGeek.com" has me set up as a permanant link near the top of his page, so every day a few people that enjoy reading about the Twins from John decide to check out the link and find themselves here.

And still, others find this site by true accident.

About 30 times a day, someone will go to Yahoo or Google or some other search engine, type in some words for a search and end up at this website.

I am able to see not only which search engine they used to get here, but which words they typed in when they did the search.

Quite often, the results are very amusing.

The most common search is for "Aaron Gleeman."

This fact always feels strange to me.

It doesn't seem natural to me that there are people in this world sitting at their computer trying to find things about me.

Can you imagine finding out that some guy in Oregon did a search for your name on Yahoo.com at 3 am last night?

It is both flattering and strange.

The second most popular search is for "Aaron's Baseball Blog," which makes more sense to me than searching for my name.

I figure people might hear about the site from a friend, but maybe not know the actual address of the website, so they go online and search it out.

This excites me because I think about people talking about this site with their friends and co-workers.

There are many other searches that pop up quite a bit.

Things like "Minnesota Twins stats" or "Theo Epstein" or "Billy Beane" or "Kevin Millar traded to Japan" or "Hall of Fame candidates" or "Luis Rivas sucks" (okay, I made that last one up).

No matter how many times someone comes to this site from a search about a player or a team or a GM, it always fascinates me a little bit.

And then there are the weird searches.

Last October, during the World Series, I was involved in a "Baseball Primer chat" where a bunch of the Primer authors watch the game and have a conversation online in a chat room.

This particular night's chat lost its focus and went from baseball to women, as most chats with a bunch of guys that lose their focus do.

One of the topics that came up in the chat was Jennifer Aniston and her butt.



I am not proud to say this, but I am an honest person and I aspire to tell my readers the truth, so I will admit that I was the one that brought this subject up.

The next day, I wrote an entry on this blog in which I discussed some of the stuff that was talked about in the chat the night before.

I mentioned the part about Ms. Aniston's butt.

(I say "Ms." Aniston because I refuse to acknowledge that she is married, in the hopes that she is not that happy and desperately searching for me, perhaps by doing a search of "Aaron Gleeman" on Yahoo.com from Oregon at 3 am)

But, I digress...

Anyway, shortly after I made passing mention of Jennifer's rear end, people started arriving at this website from searches of "Jennifer Aniston's Butt."

Such is the beauty of the internet.

Something I say on my tiny little blog one day in passing can somehow find a place in Yahoo's database of websites and be found by people searching for something relating to a celebrity's butt.

I always get a chuckle out of someone arriving here by searching for that, if only because I imagine how utterly disappointed they are when they get here and realize that all this website contains is a bunch of stuff about baseball written by some kid in Minnesota.

"Aniston's butt" is the most common of the "strange" search phrases, but there are many others.

Remember when those two idiots ran out on the field in Chicago and attacked the Royal's first base coach?



I wrote an entry about it and it apparently included the phrase "shirtless guys."

Every couple of days or so, someone will come here by way of a Google search for the phrase "shirtless guys."

I have come to the conclusion that they do not find here what they were looking for.

During the Twins/Angels playoff series last October, I watched one of the games at my aunt and uncle's house.

While there, I played some Nok Hockey with my 3 cousins and when I wrote an entry about the game the next day, I said so.



Now, at least once a day, someone comes here after trying to find information about Nok Hockey on the internet.

Like I said, I always get a kick out of seeing these searches.

Then, yesterday a new one popped up that has me a little flustered.

At 1:02 AM, someone using AOL on a Macintosh computer and living on the west coast went to google and typed in the following:

"aaron's baseball blog", overrated

What do I make of this?

Well, as far as I can tell, there are two distinct possibilities.

The first one, and the one I hope is true, is that this person was looking for an entry on this site where I talked about someone or something being overrated.

Maybe they wanted to find the entry from a few weeks ago where I wrote about Rey Ordonez signing with Tampa Bay and I said, "They'll say they wanted Ordonez's defense for their young pitching staff, but what good does that do you when his defense isn't even that good anymore and has always been overrated?"

I am sure that I have desrcibed a player or an aspect of a player's game as overrated many times on this blog and I am hoping that is what this person was searching for at 1:02 AM.

The second possibility, and the one my paranoid mind has latched onto as the truth, is that the person was sitting in California late at night, trying to find something on the internet about this very website being overrated.

At first I found this highly implausible, mostly because I don't think I have reached the level of notoriety that there are other websites talking about me, let alone writing that I am overrated.

But then I thought to myself that there doesn't have to actually be other websites writing that about me, this person is simply searching for such a thing.

As I said, this is what my mind has latched on to.

I am now confident that there is a person living on the West Coast, using AOL at 1:02 AM on a Macintosh to do Google searches that has thought to themself, "I really hate that Aaron's Baseball Blog and I think it is really overrated...I wonder if anyone else feels the same way."

To that person, I have a message:

Shame on you!

This website is obviously one of the most UNDERrated things since Honus Wagner and that thing on the informercial that hooks into a vacuum cleaner and cuts hair.

It deserves massive amounts of attention and incredible praise.

You want an overrated website, try ESPN.com!

Phooey!

What the heck does Peter Gammons know anyway? And so what if I first got interested in writing about baseball because of Rob Neyer! They have stats and player profiles that I link to every single day? Big deal!

And finally, to this AOL using, Macintosh owning, google searching, up past midnight on the West Coast, Aaron's Baseball Blog hating person, I say this:

SHOW YOURSELF!

Don't hide behind your (Macintosh) computer (that contains AOL and is located on the West Coast).

Show yourself!

I think you won't, because you are afraid.

Do you want to know why?

Because it is you that is overrated!

I know atleast 10 other people living on the West Coast that do much better 1:02 AM Google searches on AOL with a Macintosh computer than you do!

A lot of people think you are in the top 5 overall in that category, but I don't even think you make the top 20.

What do you think about that?!

AHA!

That's the last time you do that Google search, isn't it?

This is the end of this entry.

You are now hereby excused from reading this website so that you may head over to Yahoo or Google and enter in searches for "Aaron Gleeman is a crazy, paranoid, overrated, Luis Rivas-hating, Bobby Kielty-loving weirdo."

Oh, I almost forgot...

If you haven't already, please head over to BaseballPrimer.com and check out my latest article: