I'd like to apologize to the dude who does Red Sox Monster. A few days ago, I was pissed about deadspin's linking his post about Dice-K's weight, an idea first brought up by bostondirtdogs. He posted about the whole issue here, after reading my criticism.

I was mainly pissed at DS and BDD, and this guy took a third of the brunt for being the man in the middle. What set me off were two things:

1. deadspin has the power to link whoever they want. There are a million blogs. I don't expect every single piece of nonsense I come up with here to be honored and praised and linked to. But when I see that they've chosen to link to a post which was nothing more than somebody reading dirtdogs, of all places, and nonchalantly repeating it, well, that can feel like a slap in the face--not only to me, specifically referring to the times when I really work long and hard on a post, but to all the other bloggers. If Joanna Empyreal Environs wrote a post that consisted of a few short paragraphs saying "Dirt Dog says this about a player's appearance, I wonder if he's right...," she'd fire herself. Again, there a lot of blogs who work very hard and do a lot of amazing work for no pay. And you know what? This guy at Red Sox Monster does a lot of good work, too. It's not his fault that a post he wrote has become what he's known for, to some people. Besides, all his posts aren't like the "fat" one. And I'm sure he'd tell you that he's done plenty of other work that he'd rather have recognized than that one. I'm not saying it's not okay to do a nonchalant, quick post about some minor detail--I've made it an art form. It's just too bad the way this all worked out.

He also talks about not taking ourselves too seriously. I'm glad to hear him say that as that's obviously something I agree with. In fact, I never even said "Oh, poor Dice-K, he might feel bad if we make fun of his weight." I was only pissed that people were making something out of nothing. Especially since he just arrived and has done nothing to deserve anything but fair and friendly treatment. Until he actually does something wrong, why not just let him do his job?

2. I'm disappointed in the way this dirtdogs thing has turned out. I started this blog three years ago, and shortly after that, I realized the ridiculousness of Boston Dirt Dogs. It's the USA Today of Red Sox sites. There's nothing on that site that can't be found on boston.com, its employer. Even when it was an independent site and had some inside info, it still was all about attempting to drive our beloved players out of town, while supporting the white, clean-cut guys and constantly hounding the players with darker skin and weirder hairstyles. The way I see it, the perfect audience for BDD is a bitter, racist, simpleton. But hey, that describes a large percentage of this country, so I guess he'll always be popular.

So my point is, I kind of thought, years ago, that we were all seeing this, and slowly BDD would fade away. Instead, he gets picked up by boston.com, and new bloggers are linking him in droves. I had really hoped my little bunch of rag-tag bloggers could've influenced everyone to at the very least not link dirtdog, as if A. he needs any more links and B. people didn't know about him. We were always kind of upset that the SG/Beth "popular kids" crew linked to BDD, but at least I'd hope new bloggers would link them, if not us, at least over BDD. But in the end, my old rag-tag crew kind of fell apart. The fall of the Bullshit Memorial empire hurt us big time. 12-Eight stopped, too, although it's just now being revived by Andrew. Reb rarely ever blogs, Witch City has moved on to a new blog, and Sam at felineanarchy is bust with her Tigers blog. Empyreal and I are still going strong, although she keeps the offseason blogging to a minimum. (But she makes up for low quantity with the highest quality.) And some of the blogs I was happy to inspire are also still going, without a dirtdog presence.

Wow, this turned into a retrospective. Anyway, great job by the old rag-tag crew. I thin everyone accomplished what they wanted to, and even if we got just a few people to think twice about dirtdogs back in the rag-tag era, we did our job. I like saying "rag-tag."