AaronGleeman.com

While people weren't dying in my dorm and I wasn't complaining about what color my mom painted my room, there was one bright spot in my weekend. Although, I wouldn't even have noticed it if not for a few loyal e-mailers.

One of the few magazines I still subscribe to is Sports Illustrated, which in an era of declining sports media coverage -- in quality, not quantity -- remains above and beyond the rest of the pack. This week's edition is the 50th Anniversary Issue (pictured below), which is apparently a pretty big deal.

As I usually do with Sports Illustrated, I leafed through it, reading a few of the articles and pieces that caught my eye, and then planned to take it back to the dorm with me for a more thorough inspection.

Then I got this e-mail on Saturday morning:

Check out the new SI, you're mentioned in it.

I tend to get a few e-mails like this every week and most of them, sadly, turn out to be a little overblown. For instance, someone might say something like, "Peter Gammons mentions you in his new ESPN.com column." So I'll get all excited, head over to ESPN.com, and find that Gammons' new column, while making mention of the equation behind Gross Production Average, makes absolutely zero mention of Yours Truly (and rightfully so).

Plus, keep in mind that the 50th Anniversary Issue is at least twice as long as Sports Illustrated normally is, so even if I was amazingly mentioned for real this time, this e-mailer didn't give me any clues about where exactly to look.

Thankfully, another e-mail rolled in a few minutes later:

Did you realize aarongleeman.com was mentioned in the current issue of SI? It was in the 9/27/04, 50th Anniversary Issue, in the "baseball" section of their expanded "Scorecard" section. There's an article on Retrosheet, then a box with four links, including your site.

Sure enough, after a moment or two of searching, I found it:

As you can sort of see in that picture above, the main article is a feature on David Smith, the man behind Retrosheet.org, which is one of the best websites in the world, baseball or otherwise. I had the pleasure of meeting David at the SABR Convention in Cincinnati this summer, and I also sat in on his presentation on scoring patterns in games, which was one of the best at the convention.

Down at the bottom right-hand corner of the page, after you're done reading the excellent article on Smith by Sports Illustrated's Daniel Habib, you come across a little box of text entitled, "Great Site Lines: Four more essential online baseball destinations."

This very site, the one you're staring at right now while you wolf down your morning coffee or your lunch-hour sandwich, is mentioned, along with Baseball Primer/Think Factory, the Sons of Sam Horn message board, and Steven Goldman's Pinstriped Bible.

For those of you who can't quite see what it says in that horrible picture I took of the page, the entry for AaronGleeman.com reads: "Twins-centric blogger Aaron Gleeman was worshipping at the altars of Justin Morneau and Johan Santana last season."

In the 25 months or so that I've been writing this blog and the seven months I've been writing at The Hardball Times, I've been very fortunate to get mentioned/praised/mocked at a number of really great websites and in a number of really cool publications. Certainly Sports Illustrated ranks up at the top of that list and seeing my name in there was really quite a thrill, so I'd like to thank whoever was responsible for including this blog in their "Great Site Lines" listing.

I'm pretty sure there's going to be another interesting mention of this blog somewhere later this week, although I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it yet or not, so I'll shut up for now. I'll keep you all posted, of course, even if you're not even interested. It's funny how this sort of stuff seems to come in streaks. As I told someone yesterday, this week has turned into my "media blitz" without me even knowing it.

Today at The Hardball Times:

- Rivals in Exile: Until We Meet Again (by Ben Jacobs and Larry Mahnken)
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