Fun Stuff Coming ...
OK, wanted to give you a couple of updates here on JoeBlogs.
(Starting next Monday, I will offer my soon-to-be-annual, massive, division-by-division baseball preview. It’s going to be pretty big, I think — basically, my idea is to make it a whole baseball preview magazine, like the old Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball mag.*
*I loved Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball — it is a big reason why I became a sportswriter. I even wrote to the editor years ago to ask for advice, and I have that letter around here somewhere. I specifically remember that one thing he wrote in there is that I should be sure to use richer adjectives rather than the generic ones everyone uses. For instance, he wrote, instead of saying a batter was “cold,” I could say he was “icy.” I have never forgotten that. Also, trivia question, can you name the all-time great movie where a Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball magazine was clearly visible? Answer to come.
Because of the heavy lifting required for the JoeBlogs Baseball Preview, we might be a bit light for the rest of this week (though you can expect the next Football 101 essay tomorrow — one of my favorites of the series so far).
Also, just saying, this might be a good time to sign up as a PosCast subscriber or give a PosCast gift with the preview coming up and the ultra-cool “Ten Who Missed” soon afterward. But far be it from me to beat you over the head with it.
We got more than 300,000 votes for the Ten Who Missed Elo game, which is WAY more than Tom Tango or I was expecting. So that’s awesome. Tom is putting together the final list now, which I have not yet seen. But from what I have seen, I will tell you there were a few surprises in the voting … and a few non-surprises. This is going to be so much fun.
“Ten Who Missed,” the series, will begin in April.
While both the JoeBlogs Baseball Preview and Ten Who Missed will be for paid subscribers, there also will be all sorts of cool and exclusive stuff for free subscribers too. I am so appreciative of your support and readership. If you’re reading this and would like to sign up for free, that would be awesome. I’ve got a button for that too:
The new PosCast is out — Mike and I break down just about every baseball transaction, offer some new Wordle technology, tell you if the Minnesota Timberwolves are good, face off on a major issue and begin the long and arduous process of finding me a new NFL team.
Trivia answer: The movie that featured Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball — and seriously, kudos to you if you got it — is the wonderful “Broadcast News.” It is the magazine that William Hurt is reading when he is at the airport waiting for Holly Hunter. This is one of my all-time favorite movies and would be even if the late, great William Hurt were reading one of those cheap baseball magazines, you know, the kind with the paper so thin it will disintegrate in your hands.
But the fact that he was reading Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball made a classic even more classic.*
*I just watched the scene again — he was reading the 1989 Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball magazine, and do you know who was on the cover? Mike Greenwell! This is the sort of utterly pointless information you can’t get ANYWHERE else.


So the question to ask about your massive division-by-division baseball preview- will it be massive enough to include the Pirates. 😂😂 I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.
BTW this is not a put down of the Pirates or their fans - they have a hard enough life as it is- but rather a reference to Joe failing to talk about, even mention, the Pirates in his baseball whirlwind blog post. For the Arizona Diamondbacks Joe said “To be perfectly honest, I kind of forgot they existed.”
For the Pirates there was no “kind of” about it.
I probably did at least 300 of those elo votes myself. After a few cycles, I realized that the guy I wanted to see the most was Fernando Valenzuela (not that I think he's the 101st best player in history, but he really deserves a deep dive).
But then I had a Fernando Valenzuela vs. Hoyt Wilhelm vote and I realized that Wilhelm was the guy I wanted to see SECOND most, but he didn't show up much in the comparisons so I had to keep voting and voting and voting until I could give Wilhelm at least a few votes.
I'm really hoping both guys made the cut!