February 28, 2005

Working Man

I start a new job today, one that'll keep me busy six mornings a week. Don't worry (or celebrate) though, I'll still be babbling about stuff here and at The Hardball Times on a near-daily basis. And, of course, my new gig involves writing about baseball too (what else do you think I'm qualified to do, exactly?).

I'm not sure if my employers are for or against revealing the identity of the man behind the curtain, so to speak, but if you see some Luis Rivas bashing and Johan Santana worshipping going on over at Rotoworld's "Player News" section, you'll have a pretty good idea why.

Meanwhile, a few notes ...

  • A lot of you have e-mailed me over the past few months, wondering why I didn't have an RSS feed for this blog. To be honest, the main reason was that I had no idea what an RSS feed was or why anyone would want me to have one. But going with the premise that the customer is always right, I have finally given in and set one up for this blog.

    There is now a link to the feed near the top of the sidebar -- the button labeled "SYNDICATED" right under the visitor counter -- although I don't know enough about RSS feeds to figure out if it's set up properly or not. So if you're someone who uses such things, please let me know if it's working correctly.

    The next big step in renovating the blog is to enable comments on selected entries, which is a very simple thing to accomplish in theory. However, when you've continuously monkeyed with a blog's template over the course of three years without really knowing what you're doing, it apparently makes some otherwise simple things difficult.

  • Have you ever gotten a phone call from someone so completely out of the blue that it took you a few moments just to figure out what exactly was going on? Last night a college friend of my mom's called me because her husband has created and developed a pretty intriguing new baseball product. (We also somehow got into a discussion about Hilary Swank's teeth, but that's beside the point.)

    It is called "Pitch Tracker" and is described as "a new and innovative pitching location training system." In other words, it is a device that acts as home plate and tells you exactly where a pitch crossed the plate. Sort of like a miniature version of Questec, except without guys like Curt Schilling and Tom Glavine wanting to destroy it with their bare hands.

    Here are a couple pictures:

    So if you're a coach or a player or the GM of a team and you think this looks as interesting as I think it does, go check out PitchTracker.com. While you're there, tell 'em Judi's kid sent ya.

  • Finally ... the response to The Hardball Times Baseball Annual was so overwhelmingly positive that we've decided to come out with a second book. This one is called The Hardball Times Bullpen Book and it is available only as an "e-book."

    It can be purchased for the low, low price of $5 and the profits will be used to continue to provide all the cool (and costly) stats we make available to you on the site for absolutely free, so I think it's a very worthy cause. For more information, check out our little sales pitch over at THT.

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