Going the Full Mazeroski
OK, I have been in a cave the last few days, and I have to get back in there for the next few, but I wanted to come out for a minute just to tell you what’s coming.
A few days ago, I mentioned that I will be giving you the massive JoeBlogs Baseball Preview starting next week. And I also mentioned how the idea is inspired by the old Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball* magazine, which I loved more than chocolate when I was a kid.
But something has happened since then. Instead of writing a JoeBlogs preview inspired by Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball … I decided instead to ACTUALLY WRITE a Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball magazine, by myself, in one week, for you JoeBlogs readers. Yes, I’m that unhinged. And so, unless I burn out — a distinct possibility — starting on Monday, JoeBlogs subscribers will basically get a full Mazeroski-esque team-by-team, division by division, preview of the 2022 baseball season.
Having worked on this the last three days, I can tell you — this is even harder than writing The Baseball 100 in 100 days. One person should not try to write an entire magazine. But that’s how much I love you all!
Obviously, I am going to put a subscribe button here, but first I will tell you that we’re offering something new that might interest you — if you subscribe now, you will get a seven-day free trial. Yes, you will still have to enter your credit card information, but you will then have seven days to decide. If you want to cancel by the seven-day mark, you can cancel at no cost to you.
Seven days will cover most of the Baseball Preview. I’m just saying if you have ever thought about subscribing, this might be the best time to do so.
OK, I’ve got to get back to work — I’m on the Texas Rangers now with miles to go before I sleep.
*In that post, I talked about how much I loved seeing Bill Hurt reading Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball in the great movie “Broadcast News.” In that post I went back and looked at the scene and determined from the quick glance I got of the cover that it was the 1989 Mike Greenwell cover.
But it was not. Several people pointed out that it couldn’t have been that cover because “Broadcast News” came out in 1987. So it was actually the Dwight Evans cover from that year.
JoeBlogs regrets the error.
I used to run Let's Go Tribe, which was SB Nation's Cleveland Indians site (The Cleveland Guardians site is now Covering the Corner), and in 2016 The Sporting News contacting me to ask if I would be one of two authors for a special edition magazine they were going to put out about the team and its season. This was an incredibly exciting offer for me, and the pay was pretty good, but the turnaround time was incredibly short because Cleveland had just won the ALCS and they wanted the magazine to be able to hit newsstands two days after the World Series ended, so everything but the World Series recap was to be submitted three days after I accepted the offer. I had to write a separate chapter about each month of the season, telling the story of the season, and write essays about half the players on the roster. Another writer would be doing the other half of the roster, as well as a recap of the ALDS and the ALCS.
I spent just about every spare moment of the next three days (the moments when I wasn't at my actual job) working on those pieces, and was really happy with how they came out. Having my own copy of a Sporting News magazine I'd co-authored was going to be a major thrill for me.
When Cleveland lost Game 7, I was heartbroken as a fan, but something else had not occurred to me: The Sporting News only wanted to put out the magazine for the team that won, and would not actually be publishing any of what I'd worked so hard on. It was a major disappointment for me.
Adding insult to injury, despite being a Cleveland fan, I actually live in Chicago, and when I was at the grocery store a couple days later, I saw the Cubs edition of the magazine, the one that actually got published. Sigh...
If there's an error, Greenwell was involved.