Hops Spring Eternal

Friday night was spent split between waiting in traffic on I-95 from DC to the Delaware Valley, driving all over King of Prussia trying to find Kildare's, and tossing back the ale with other members of the "Phlogosphere." Having already met Shallow Center last year at opening day through his bro, we also were treated to sitting down with the authors of Balls, Sticks & Stuff, Beerleaguer, and Swing & A Miss for the first time. No matter your pursuit in life, it's always nice to find kindred souls for diuscussion and while there was the requisite talk about the local 9 (as well as the local 25, the local 40, and the entire minor league system), we were honestly just as happy to talk non-baseball as well. When Mr. Goyne and yours truly wrapped up the evening by packing it in around 12:30, it was enough to make one wish that we hadn't moved to DC. Again.

But, perhaps that's what baseball can do to a fan.

Yet, imagine our surprise when we picked up the Philadelphia Inquirer the next day to find nhot only a story on the outlook of the local Phillies blogging collective, but to find our own little site included in it. We we hadn't known it had previously been a post on Blinq earlier in the week, so we were outright surprised to read the following passage, which closes the story:

GR, who maintains a love-hate relationship from Arlington, Va., with the local nine, does a nice job on a site called Caught Looking of sifting through the Philadelphia baseball beat writers' spring previews for morsels to gnaw. He's blunt:

"Most of the news around the horn lately is little more than the standard crust in a pie yet to be baked."

His bio states what all of these dutiful bloggers are thinking. He lists his interests this way:
"Mixing baseball, music, city planning and God knows whatever else. When do pitchers and catchers report?"

They have. This week. Finally.

Kind words and yes, mom, we've already thanked the author. What we want to know, however, is, did Mr. Rubin follow us to the bar Friday night? Each author mentioned in the print story was in attendence, save for Brian Michael of Phillies Nation, who lives in London. To quote Durso's favorite band, that's a stange magic. In any case, we're honored, humbled, surpised, and mostly embarressed a bit for the scores of other bloggers who do as good if not a better job of dissecting the circumstances, ideas, and numbers surrounding phranchise.

It's very weird to think that actual card carrying members of the media pay attention to this type of thing sometimes, but by the same token, it was brought up over beers Friday night that no other team seems to have quite the array of blogs dedicated to it that the Phillies do (perhaps the Red Sox). Make of that what you will, we guess. For now, its nice to be part of the team. CL is just going to take it one game at a time and, Lord willing, we'll help the blogworld in any way that we can.

Remind us to change that bio by the way. We've kept it all-baseball, all-the-time so far.