Those of us who do this sort of thing for a living are on intimate terms with deadlines. Some of us may not like them, but we know them all too well. That's why I was more than a little curious to see what would happen in the blog-o-sphere yesterday when the Rangers traded star first baseman Mark Teixeira.
There are a half dozen or so well-done Rangers blogs run by people who don't do this for a living. The most famous (and when I say famous, I mean it -- this guy is a huge star in that particular universe) is written by a lawyer named Jamey Newberg called the Newberg Report. Sure enough, when I checked, Newberg had a flashing red box on his site announcing the trade.
That was impressive enough. But the one that blew me away was Lone Star Ball, run by Adam Morris, who I don't know much about. (Wamre has actually met Newberg, both of them being Rangers' fan big shots.) Morris' coverage of the trade was mind-bogglingly amazing, a lesson to more established media outlets (take note, Belo and Star-Telegram owner McClatchy). Morris had a piece up called Previewing the pundits comments that made this ex-sportswriter laugh out loud. He riffed on Galloway, Jacques Taylor, Dale Hansen and the rest and it was brilliant.
Newberg is the ultimate Rangers fan, and that's what makes reading his blog and newsletters so much fun. As we all know, players come and go, but as Newberg points out in his blog today concerning the Tex trade, the fans are never traded, can't take free agency and never really retire — if you like baseball, and you live in Dallas, you pretty much have to follow the Rangers through good and bad. I don't know how the guy finds time to be a litigator, and apparently a pretty good one, because he knows as much about baseball as almost anyone on the Rangers payroll. And as with many bloggers, what's best about this situation is that he's sharing what he knows with the rest of us for free (at least for now; who would blame him if he wanted to charge a bit for what he knows and does).
Posted by: Rick Wamre | Jul 31, 2007 at 09:25 AM
I just ran across a 2004 Dallas Observer story about Newberg - I must have missed it the first time around. Here's a warning: It's kind of a long story, but it's not all about baseball, and if you have the time, it's worth reading.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2004-07-22/news/the-unnatural/
Posted by: Rick Wamre | Jul 31, 2007 at 10:17 AM