Been awhile since I’ve had one of these, but thanks to reading some of my fellow MBA bloggers’ websites, I’ve found a few things out.
Thanks to Soccer Dad, I found out that the Baltimore Orioles’ farm system is getting quite a bit more compact geographically. Instead of shipping their players to Canada to hold them in reserve just off the big league roster, now players who progress through the Orioles system will go this route: Bluefield (WV), Aberdeen, Delmarva, Frederick, Bowie, Norfolk, and Baltimore. After 38 years as a Mets affiliate, the Norfolk Tides will now become the top farm team of the Orioles.
It may also come to pass that the man who owns the Tides, Ken Young, would become the new owner of three other teams in the Orioles’ chain, including the Shorebirds. That deal is apparently now contingent on the approval of both the minor league and major league baseball organizations, but that’s generally a rubber stamp.
So if Ken Young happens to be reading this, please refer to this post! I have a few suggestions for you.
Further, I found out that the lone Maryland team not holding an Orioles affiliation, the Hagerstown Suns, has also dropped the Mets as a talent supplier and opted to become a farm team for the Washington Nationals. So a great Maryland rivalry becomes even better. In fact, with the exception of the lowest level, starting next season the Orioles and Nationals affiliates will become at least semi-frequent opponents at each minor league level because longtime Yankee triple-A affiliate Columbus will become the Nationals’ top farm club in 2007.
Another item I saw amongst my MBA brethren was a blurb on Pillage Idiot regarding the top 10 Maryland political bloggers, of which he was one along with the Alan Colmes of our group (Crablaw) and some Eastern Shore blog, now what was the name of it?
Here is what Stephanie Dray had to say about monoblogue:
“This blog about Maryland politics is located in Salisbury, and that’s a good thing. In any discussion of Maryland politics, the Eastern Shore tends to be neglected. Monoblogue attempts to pick up the slack. Unusual for conservative commentary, the tone of this blog tends to be wonky. There’s a slew of useful links on the right-hand side, and it’s filled with content. A handy resource for those looking to learn more about Maryland politics.”
And here’s her list of the others in the Top 10. As one would expect from a left-leaning perspective, she mostly cites those that share her views. However, her comments about monoblogue tell me that I’m pretty much hitting the target that I intended when I started it, particularly regarding the links and the amount of content. So I appreciate the input from Stephanie, and perhaps that’s why I had a record for both hits and readership in September. I do think it’s a bit funny that I see this praise on a week that I was tracking the baseball playoff picture on a nightly basis. But I can’t do wall-to-wall politics because I’d get burnt on it.
Speaking of hits and readers, I was looking at my Site Meter today and realized that reader number 10,000 should be visiting my site this week. (This is readers since I started the Site Meter in the spring.) It’ll be interesting to see who it is, if I can figure it out.
Also, just to make people aware of this, I’ve already contacted Comcast about my move – but there may be a period in two weeks where my updates will be nonexistent as monoblogue switches venues. Hopefully all will go smoothly with the move; however, after the election I’m going to also update to WordPress 2.0.4 so there might have to be a template change (right now I run a much older WordPress version, release 1.5.2). Thus it’s possible the “look” of monoblogue could change as well. Just a “heads up”.
There is one thing I’m going to look for in WordPress that I’d like to integrate into monoblogue, and that’s the ability to do polls. I’m not sure if there’s a plugin that does it for WordPress, but if I can find one which agrees with the other plugins I have, I’ll integrate it and do occasional polls because I’m just a curious sort like that.
Two small errors. The current owner of the Tides has contracted to buy the Shorebirds, Keys (Frederick) and Baysox (Bowie) from Comcast Spectacor. The Iron Birds are currently owned by Ripken Baseball and they are not selling. To the best of my knowledge the Rookie League team (Bluefield is not in the deal either).
You are correct but so am I. I said Young owns the Tides (who will become an Orioles affiliate) and is buying three other teams (without specifying the other two besides the Shorebirds). Indeed, they are Frederick and Bowie.