I'm just realizing now how much Baseball Digest influenced me. I used to subscribe to this little magazine as a kid in the 80s, along with SI, TSN, Sport, baseball card Price Guides, etc. (Thanks to my mom and dad--I sure as Chan wasn't paying for this stuff.)

The archives of "the Digest" are up online, from the 1940s through 2007. You can look at each page of each issue here. Amazing. So, yeah, my blog seems to be the same thing as this magazine. It's got the quiz section. It's got another quiz about the rules of the games. It's got all kinds of weird stats and trivia, pictures, schedules, puzzles, and comments from readers ("the fans speak out"). And seeing the ads made me realize where I picked up a lot of the stuff I still have. There's all kinds of chintzy baseball merch like stickers and magnets and clothes, books (The Baseball Quiz Book my Ted Misa! I haven't seen that image for so long!), cards, simulation games, other magazines dedicated to individual teams, fantasy league stuff. (As I've said before, I don't do these leagues today--because I burned out on them a long time before they became popular. And no, I still won't trade Greenwell for Mattingly.)

There's a lot more specific stuff I could talk about, but I'll just let it filter into my writing over the next few decades.

Red Sox update: Looks like we picked up 38-year old pitcher Takashi Saito. He had an injury and missed late July and August last year, but overall, his stats are pretty amazing. If he's healthy, he should be key.


(Thanks to Cardboard Gods for the link.)