{"id":118,"date":"2007-03-02T18:01:27","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T18:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=118"},"modified":"2007-03-02T18:01:27","modified_gmt":"2007-03-02T18:01:27","slug":"one-year-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"One Year Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year ago today I published my first post on this blog. Often when you read an anniversary post\/article it will contain a list of great achievements: vast hit counts and countless examples of their writings being lauded by the great and good.<\/p>\n

Not so here!!!<\/p>\n

Like every other man and his dog (and the most popular Norfolk blogger is a dog<\/a>, that’s kind of how our fine county is!), I thought it would be fun to carve out my own space on the Internet. A humble, modest little place where I could write about baseball. Nothing more, nothing less. I certainly didn’t start this venture with grand ideas of large hit counts or propelling myself to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153baseball guru\u00e2\u20ac\u009d status.<\/p>\n

A single hit means one person, somewhere in the world, has taken the time to read what I have written (unless they’ve stumbled here by accident and immediately left \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which isn’t unlikely, to be fair). That’s more than enough of a reward for me.<\/p>\n

The writing alone is very enjoyable. I’ve always been the writing sort and I had been itching to write about baseball for a while. The sheer devotion of baseball fans to the sport and the outstanding level of baseball writing was both stimulating and a bit intimidating. I was well aware that baseball is a vast ocean and it was only back in 1998 that I first started getting my feet wet, but last winter I felt that it was time to throw away the rubber ring!<\/p>\n

I’m not an authority on the sport and I don’t claim to be, but heading into my tenth season I feel confident to state an opinion on most matters and not feel out of my depth (that’s not a cue to test me, please note!). There’s still plenty to learn, yet the beauty of baseball is that even an eighty year veteran could probably say the same thing. And my Britishness has been declared loud and clear, so any clangers can merrily be put down to naivety rather than stupidity. Please feel free to correct me if and when needed!<\/p>\n

The Grand Idea<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concept behind this blog, as suggested by the name, is simply to write about baseball from a British perspective.<\/p>\n

Being a baseball fan in Blighty can be a bit of a solitary existence, but there is a decent community of like-minded souls thanks in great part to Five’s peerless baseball coverage. This is complimented by a British baseball internet presence for us converts to the sport, lead by the Baseballfan.co.uk website and forum, and the Fantasy Baseball UK website among others. I would like to think this blog could form an additional part of it.<\/p>\n

Most British baseball fans have to put up with a fair amount of grief for their love of the sport and I’m sure many have tried to convince friends and family to give it a look before judging it; knowing that if they do they will probably become hooked as well. As mentioned above, baseball can be a bit intimidating to the newcomer so another motivation behind this blog is to make baseball more accessible to British sports fans by discussing it in terms they are familiar with and by explaining things through comparing\/relating them to British sporting equivalents.<\/p>\n

As an offshoot, the blog (or, more realistically, the occasional post) may provide an entertaining alternative viewpoint for Americans and other baseball fans around the world.<\/p>\n

That’s the general idea anyway!<\/p>\n

Thanks to every one who has taken a look at this blog during its first year. There’s been a noticeable increase in visitors over the last couple of months (partly due to my increased posting rate I guess!) and I’m delighted to see a few people posting comments as well.<\/p>\n

Here’s to year two and beyond.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago today I published my first post on this blog. Often when you read an anniversary post\/article it will contain a list of great achievements: vast hit counts and countless examples of their writings being lauded by the great and good. Not so here!!! Like every other man and his dog (and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-info"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}