Last Sunday I worked during the day and came home. Like I often do when I get home I checked my email, checked facebook and checked out my Miller Park Drunk twitter account. I saw that one of my friends on twitter, wezen-ball a real clever baseball blog, had an extra ticket to Sunday’s Brewers game, but had no one to go with. Now, I’d never met him before, but I thought we had a decent rapport from our online interactions (and his girlfriend is one of MPD’s biggest fans) and I figured it’d be a good experience so I asked him if he wanted me to come with. Three hours later I was meeting him outside of Miller Park and we were on our way to our seats for the Milwaukee Brewers vs Philadelphia Phillies game.
I have to say that I had a really good time. He was really intelligent and I was able to talk to him about certain baseball related topics that I wouldn’t be able to talk about with most of my friends. (This isn’t meant as a dis on my friends, of course, but there are some things that only guys who are big enough nerds to blog about baseball for fun would understand.) We also did a fair share of talking about blogging and what it’s like, and what you get out of it. During the game he checked his twitter account and came to find out that one of the contributors from Yahoo’s Big League Stew (my favorite baseball blog), Answer Dave, was at the game and because of wezen-ball’s popularity he wanted to leave the press box to come and sit with us. And he did.
For the next two innings we talked about everything from “off the record” things players have told him to the press box to writing on the internet and what it means to just talking baseball. I made a few good jokes and everyone was having a really good time. He tried to talk Larry into getting a press pass and doing interviews, which I agreed that he should do. Then he said “I don’t know if something called “Miller Park Drunk” would have a good chance of getting a pass though,” which I agreed with because it’s an understatement to say the least. (I’m not getting the pass for the title alone, I’m surprised I’m allowed in the park based on some of the content). That’s just not what that site is, but it really got me thinking about it.
On the one hand I don’t want to be that guy, but on the other you can’t help but feel a little jealous. I’m a good writer and my site has a strong following, but I could never get that sort of access. I have no doubt in my mind that if I made a new site, say “Brew Crew Bill’s Brewers Site” and just wrote about the Brewers in a non-offensive way and never made negative comments about people that I could be that person. I could get press passes and maybe I could end up getting a job with one of the baseball blogs on the internet that pay people. That is not wholly unbelievable, but I honestly think that is not something I want to do. I don’t want to be the guy from Big League Stew despite the fact that I think he has a pretty awesome job and is a really cool guy because I’d rather be Ken Tremendous of Fire Joe Morgan aka Michael Schur, creator of Parks & Recreation. I think blogging about baseball is fun and I like to do it, but I have never thought that me writing a blog about the Brewers was going to lead to me becoming a baseball writer because I never wanted to be a baseball writer. I remain, stubbornly, stuck on my film and television writing goals.
Still, it was a really great time and sort of an eye-opening experience that despite what we may think sitting at home writing stuff on the internet that it actually does matter to some people and that people do like it. Since starting Miller Park Drunk I’ve made some ad money, but what really sticks out to me is the tickets I’ve gotten for free and the t-shirts I’ve gotten for free or even just the emails I’ve gotten from people telling me how much they liked it. To me that’s worth it and that’s enough to validate what I am doing. Could I continue and take it to the next level? Probably, but that’s not in my plans right now. Days like Sunday are why I do this.
