In a lot of ways, I have Small White Ball to thank for reviving my writing career.
After reading Stephen King’s On Writing on a 2003 trip to California, I found a desire in myself to start writing again about four years after I had effectively hung up the keyboard after graduating college. After focusing on sports at times on my personal blog that launched in 2003, I created SWB in 2007 at the prompting of my brother.
It began with my passion for baseball and especially, the Boston Red Sox. My initial vision was for a baseball-only blog featuring myself and several other writers contributing. I did get some interest from friends, but I couldn’t get a regular effort from the group and thus, I handled the majority of the content.
I soon found that I wanted to write more than just baseball, but didn’t want to start another blog. So without a name change or even a redesign of the awesome header created by my friend Ben, I started to introduce blogs about other Boston sports and media related topics. There was no real format, but I simply blogged about my opinions about topics that I loved to discuss or found really interesting. With the explosion of sports here in the Hub and the dawning of the social media age, it was a great time to launch.
As time went along, we definitely had some wins at SWB, the biggest being the first blog to run a recap of the infamous Mike and Mike Roast where ESPN anchor Dana Jacobson downed a whole lotta vodka and kinda went nutty (seen below). I can still remember the day as it was snowing like crazy and I was working from home, wondering why Mike and Mike weren’t discussing something they had pushed so hard for months. I did a little research and found a small online newspaper in New Jersey that was there and ran a story about what happened.
I searched and couldn’t find anything about it, so I did a full recap and spread the news among my network as best I could. The site traffic exploded and suddenly, SWB was known for something even though we never did get the credit for being first on the scene. Oh well.
Sadly, that was the only real major coverage we ever got, even though we did get some random links on CBS Sports, Deadspin and a few other sites along the way. I even got a weekly radio spot on WMLL FM here in Manchester talking Boston sports.
Thoughts of doing syndication with smaller local papers crossed my mind, but then a sport called MMA started to take off and grabbed my attention. I created RopesRingCage.com and my attention shifted. I found it easier to make an in-roads during the growth period of MMA than anything I was writing about Boston because of the blog explosion and the media saturation with the Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins.
As time went on, I began to post here less and less. Every time I would make a note about a subject I wanted to write about, I’d get caught up with other projects and then, the news would be old by the time I got around to it. It became obvious that my gumption for writing about the Boston sports scene just wasn’t there and that my goal of being absorbed by a media outlet just wasn’t going to happen. Even with a planned relaunch under BostonSportsObserver.com, the game was over.
Thus, I penned the final three columns at the end of 2009 (the top Boston sports stories of the year which were some of my favorite pieces to recap and write) and made the decision to no longer contribute fresh content to SWB. We’re calling it a day with this post, the 333rd in SWB history.
Remaining Thoughts
There were a few ideas left on the stove that I never did get to.
- The AL-to-NL difference in pitching – This is something that needs to be brought up more often, but when Brad Penny, John Smoltz and Vicente Padilla get ripped up in the American League and then go to the National League and suddenly dominate, isn’t that saying something? It’s not coincidence – the NL lineups are just that bad. I hate seeing pitchers hit and think it’s a joke. Why isn’t the lack of offense brought up more? I don’t understand this.
Also, when it’s made out to be a big deal that a pitcher gets a hit, I think that’s wrong. Really, who likes to see pitchers hit – purists? Should we play all games during the day too? Let pitchers focus on what they do best: throw the baseball. Know how Randy Johnson got hurt last season? Hitting. Bring the DH to the National League and stop messing around already.
If I was in the NL East, I would fear how great Roy Halladay will be as he likely could win 25 games this season. It’s going to be ridiculous how much he will dominate.
The Globe’s Nick Cafardo actually did something on this subject here which is probably exactly what I would have wrote.
- Tommy Heinsohn: Our Crazy Old Awesome Celtics Grandfather – This was going be a post dedicated to the greatness that is the Celtics’ color commentator with some jabs at Bruins play-by-play Jack Edwards, who I don’t care for. I wrote a sentence, but know this: Tommy is awesome. Yeah, he’s a homer but in the most endearing way possible. ‘Nuff said.
- Five Things To Look For With The Red Sox’ 09-10 Schedule – I got through two things, started a third and just stopped. For the record, here’s what I originally wrote with the Manny stuff obviously being outdated:
1) The potential return of Manny RamirezRemember that guy who got traded last season, the same one who was a future Hall-of-Famer for Boston yet garnered as much scrutiny as praise? Well that guy – Manuel Aristides Ramirez – could be coming back to play another round of games at the Fens – this time in an L.A. Dodgers uniform when the blue/white hit up Boston on June 18th-20th I say potential because there is no guarantee Ramirez will still be with the Dodgers next season.While he did sign a two-year, $45 million deal last year, he has the option to back out after 2009 and become a free agent again. With Manny and Scotty Boras in tow, that is entirely a realistic possibility.
But wow, that would be a media event, even in Boston.2) Sox/Yankees continues to get messed with
While Boston playing New York isn’t anything new, Major League Baseball has once again tinkered with the formula of 18 divisional games. Now, the two rivals will open up the season AND close the season against each other, which is kind of a cool concept.
But if you’re a hardcore fan and the season is coming down to those last few games, wouldn’t you rather get a different draw than your biggest rival? Sports is entertainment, but this one drips of FOX forcing the issue rather than for the interest of competition. There are plenty of storylines that could draw out, especially if the season comes down to those three games. However, if both teams are comfortably in the playoffs, you’re going to see a ton of scrubs.
But what really got me was that Boston plays the first six of these games at Fenway, then plays in Yankee Stadium for the next nine games and then plays the final three at Fenway. Nine straight in either scenario seems pretty foolish, as does the face the two teams don’t play each other in June or July.
Open up the season with the two, but let the rest of the scheduling just play out like anyone else. It’s our rivalry…not everyone else’s.
3) Bye-bye in July
Out of 25 games in July, 16 will be played on the road including a 10-game West Coast swing. This is part of an overall stretch of 14 games in a row that starts in Boston with four games against Texas.
- 4th and Long: Much like what I used to do with the Pros vs. Joes recaps, I was going to do a running blog on the Spike show 4th and Long. I wrote one post and never published it. I ended up getting backed up on TV and only saw like four episodes so I have no idea what happened and assume the show will never return. Poor Michael Irvin.
There were a few others, but most cover subjects you can read other places. This also partially answers the question…
Why now? Here’s three reasons.
- MMA. I am a freelancer for national publication FIGHT! Magazine, along with doing the RopesRingCage.com stuff. Along with having a full-time job, I just don’t have the time to
write for both SWB and RRC, especially when both aren’t really money-makers. I’m passionate about covering this still-growing sport and the fact that my writing on RRC has helped me get a paid gig with the top magazine in the sport was kind of a revelation. - There’s enough voices out there. My voice is now just one of roughly 22,324 out there that have blogs. Having a blog was big when I started this in 2004 and is even bigger now. Honestly, it’s almost too easy as there is a lot of bad writing out there which makes it even that much harder to push your content through the muck. At some point, there are only so many different opinions you can hear about Jonathan Papelbon’s contract. Quite simply, I felt like my opinion just didn’t stand out that much anymore and when you hit that point as a writer, that’s a bad place to be.
- There’s a lot of good voices out there. With the collapse of newspapers, some of the guys I love to read have been snatched up by growing media empires. Mike Felger, Sean McAdam and even Peter Gammons are cranking out quality articles and opinions on the ‘net, taking a crowded marketplace and making it even more packed. Read the next generation of quality voices and give them your support. From established and about to turn the corner sites like Evan Brunell’s Fire Brand Of The American League or on-the-rise blogs like Darryl Johnston’s Sox Tea Party, there’s some great stuff out there from people that are passionate about Boston sports.
(Side note on the above: Evan actually took on SWB as part of his now-defunct MVN Network, which I thank him for as we got to the 3rd page of Google under ‘Boston sports blog’. He deserves all the success that comes to him as he’s a hard worker that deserves a big break. Darryl has been a friend of mine for years and I’ve been helping him with his writing career for some time now. The best is yet to come with that guy….just wait.)
So that is that. Thanks to everyone that read and contributed over the years. Thanks to those that argued or agreed with me in public or private about my views as I thought that was the greatest benefit of all: people wanted to talk about what I wrote. In the approximately six years that SWB has been cranking it out, I think the site left a mark and at the least, helped get me back to a point where writing became important in my life again.
The site will remain up as a content hub and at some point, I’m going to add some older back content from my JoshNason.com site about the 2004 Red Sox run playoffs. You can catch me at RopesRingCage.com or in FIGHT! Magazine if you’re into MMA and especially the UFC. And of course, it goes without saying that if you’re one of the afore-mentioned media entities and you’re looking for a good writer, I’m sure I could be coerced into coming out of retirement. A guy’s gotta eat and gamble, right?
There are a lot of choices out there for you to read. Whatever you do, make sure that you find writers that matter to you and make you think. There are far too many sheep out there and not enough wolves. Demand better writing and thought provoking content and let others know about it when you find it. The ever-changing media game is going to continue to develop and evolve faster than we ever could have imagined but one thing will remain the same: quality, not quantity.
End transmission.
Josh Nason is the editor and main writer for Small White Ball, a Boston sports and media blog that was active from 2004-2010. You can still reach Josh at josh [at] smallwhiteball [dot-com] and follow him at Twitter.
Small White Ball...a boston sports blog 