Daily Archives: March 9, 2005

Hey yo, yo, yo. Welcome to Bronx Banter’s new home, Baseball Toaster. After a great run at All-Baseball.com, we’re starting f-r-e-s-h for 2005. Course it should be nothing short of another entertaining baseball season in the Boogie Down.

I’m proud to announce that Cliff Corcoran will be co-writing Bronx Banter with me this season. When I started this blog, I always dreamed of having collaborators, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have writers like Chris DeRosa, Edward Cossette, and Brian Gunn submit articles periodically. But I’ve long craved something more permanent. I don’t pretend to be any kind of baseball expert, which is why I enjoying linking to other writing around the web. Now, there will be another distinct voice right here. I think the two of us will compliment each other nicely and be able to provide you with even more balanced Yankee thoughts and coverage than ever. Cliff is actually emotionally stable when it comes to the Yanks, which is comforting, knowing how nuts I tend to get when the going gets tough. What’s really cool about having Cliff aboard is that he’s a crack analyst. He does just the kind of stuff that I love reading but am not so interested in writing myself. I’m not going anywhere but now you’ll get two writers for the price of none!

I’m sure a lot of you are already familar with Cliff’s stuff, but do wish him a warm welcome (and not a Bronx Cheer) to the blog when you get a minute.

Also, bear with us for a minute as the technical kinks sort themselves out. As Robert DeNiro told his cronies in Good Fellas: “It’s gunna be a good summer!”

When I was but a wee lad, knee-high to a sowís ear (er . . . whatever), my elders would often lean over me in a terrifying manner and say such horrible things as “enjoy it while you can, it wonít last forever” and “these are the best days of your life, you know.” I took them for fools at the time. Still do. Certainly there are advantages to the responsibility-free lifestyle of childhood, but with that lack of responsibility comes a significant lack of personal freedom. School, for example, is downright fascist.

Still, one thing I do miss about the nine months of ritualistic abuse that comprised the school year is the optimism and clean slate with which I would approach each new grade in September. Armed with a brand new pencil case and the latest model Trapper Keeper, I was always sure that this would be the year Iíd complete every homework assignment (on time, no less), and get “a hundred” on every test. It never happened that way, of course, but that feeling of hope, ambition, and freedom from the previous yearís failures and shortcomings was invigorating, something Iíve never been able to recreate in a work environment.

The closest I come to that feeling as an “adult” is not the change over of the calendar, with itís empty resolutions and tradition of starting the new year on the worst footing possible thanks to the debauchery that ends the previous one (of which I generally donít partake), but the beginning of the baseball season as players report to spring training in late February and early March. Suffering from the same delusions that plagued me in past Septembers, each player arrives at camp with a brand new pencil case and the latest model Trapper Keeper, sure that this is the year theyíll learn to lay off the slider low and away, hit the cut-off man, avoid the injury bug, and finally work up to their potential and play well with others.

This year, that feeling for me is especially strong because of the confluence of spring training, my move here to Bronx Banter, and the launching of our new host, Baseball Toaster. So, with the crisp spring air in our lungs and visions of a 162-0 Yankee team dancing in our heads, letís all get out a clean sheet of loose leaf paper and, in our best, clearest handwriting, take a look at this yearís crop of Yankee campers.

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