Baseball Discussion

So, what I personally really want in a baseball community is a) discussion, and b) sharing what it is we like so much about the game. Therefore, I'd like to encourage some specific types of posts here.

- Liveblogging and game discussion. Please feel free to open up a post about a game you are watching. You can liveblog in the post itself (start, post, add on, repost, add on more, repost, etc.) though I recommend keeping part of the action behind a cut in that case, or you can liveblog in the comments (I'd suggest unthreaded) to make for easier discussion. You can also just open up a general discussion post about a widely available game (national TV). Liveblogging is welcome for any level of team; the less accessible the game, the more background material you may want to include. (Most cable subscribers can watch the Sunday night ESPN game, and there's plenty of info available about your local MLB team, their players, and their games even for people who don't have Extra Innings or mlb.tv, but if you want to talk about your local college team, we'll mostly just know what you tell us.)

- What's so great about your favorite team(s) or player(s)? What should we be paying attention to when your team plays our team? (Or what games should we be tuning in to when our team isn't playing or is already down 8-0?) Tell us about the great double-play combination, the rookie who's hitting everything, the comeback story of that free agent they signed on March 15th, the oddball stat your guy is running up, their undefeated record in their conference, whatever it is that makes them interesting, and please DO link to articles and box scores and so on, and good sources of ongoing information.

- Interesting things that have happened/are happening in baseball. Your team just had their right fielder trade places with a relief pitcher for 2/3 of an inning? Pitcher threw a shutout and drove in the only run? Got a kid in your neck of the woods who threw four straight no-hitters? Favorite prospect threw a perfect game? Local little league team headed for Williamsport? Tell us all about it. Links to articles and media are again encouraged -- good sportswriting, photo galleries, video highlights, audio interviews, etc.

- Excellent baseball stuff on the net. The most solid informational blog or most well-mannered and intelligent fan discussion forum site for your team, a great flickr photostream of game photos from the ballpark, a great niche blog with interesting information, explanations of advanced stats in plain English, etc. For individual teams, feel free to start a compiling post for quality team-specific links and people can add more in the comments.


Posting about all of these things is actually giving me some ideas for shaping the community and some guidelines beyond just basic netiquette (mostly in the 'if it's worth posting about, it's worth being thorough' vein, and also for tagging), which I'll be thinking about in the near future. Feel free to comment with suggestions, and also feel free to make other kinds of posts besides the above (discussion questions, etc.).

While we're getting started, please leave a comment to this post and introduce yourself and your baseball love.