Toeing the Rubber

I received an email from an someone who used to comment on my blog back in the MLBLogs days yesterday while I was at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox honor Jason Varitek by losing a series to the Toronto Blue Jays. I haven’t been to many games at Fenway this year so I’m at the point where I hope for a win when I go but if I get a loss I shrug it off. So this post isn’t to lament the state of the Red Sox versus the Blue Jays.

In this email, this former commenter wondered why I wasn’t blogging every day the way I did back at MLBlogs (and the way I have for quite a while) and, being a Yankees fan/blogger, he deduced it was because the Red Sox are struggling and while I’m happy to write about the team when they are doing well I’m “not enough of a fan” to write about them when they do poorly.

So, instead of engaging in a series of email messages where I’m sure I would ultimately tell this  person to take a fork and stick it, well you know where, I thought I’d actually use the time and energy to write a blog post about just that issue.

In spite of the team’s record (which, of this writing, is 48-47), I’m actually enjoying this season a lot. It’s been fun to watch Will Middlebrooks come into his own as a starter and getting to see the Mauro Gomez’ and Pedro Ciriaco’s of the world get their call up and do something with it has been a blast. Cody Ross channeling the 2003/2004 version of Kevin Millar alone has been worth tuning in to the Red Sox every night – and I have been.  But writing about them is a different beast.

Back in the day there was a time when I was writing essentially for myself. In spite of being part of MLBLogs i really didn’t consider the idea that other people were reading what I was writing. For quite a while I didn’t even tell anyone, not my family nor my friends, that I had the blog (and I used “Red Sox Chick” without revealing my real name for a while).  Those were the days when I would throw a random “Oh my God what is wrong with these guys?” post up on the blog and not think twice about the responses.  But now there’s a bigger audience (which I’m grateful for) and I feel a bit more of a responsibility to not clog the RSS feeds of folks who are kind enough to follow me with random mini-rants that have no substance.

Once I went over to WEEI, I had a different audience and different responsibilities.  Folks had voted me in and I was getting paid to update the blog daily so regardless of whether I had something to say or not, I would post because I had a commitment to keep to folks.  Once I left EEI and came back on my own, I still feel that responsibility to post for folks looking to read me (and I thank all of you who do continue to read me) but my personal issues over the last two years have, unfortunately, not always made it easy to consistently post.

So this entry is for everyone to know that 1) I have not abandoned the Red Sox nor the readers of this blog and 2) I’ll be blogging (however intermittently it might be) for as long as people keep reading…and probably long after that too.