Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Breaking 100: Back for More

I've always enjoyed doing this blog. I started it in 2006 because I really thought the Royals wouldn't lose 100 games that year. I envisioned a big celebratory blog moment when the Royals won their 63rd game. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

I tracked them again in 2007. I wasn't as excited about it last year because I was really tired of Buddy Bell. That guy... naw, I don’t want to go down that path.

Anyway, they avoided 100 losses last year. There wasn't much of a celebration here. I'm not sure if anybody even reads this damn thing. But it's still interesting to plug the game results into my spreadsheet everyday and see how the Royals are trending. It was nice to see the green up arrow, instead of the red down arrow.

After they won their 63rd game last year, I quit posting. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one, they broke 100. That was the whole point of the blog, right? But, I also started a new job at around that same time.

Not to get off onto a Posnanski-like tangent, but my old job was very boring. We just weren't very busy there. We had a shake-up in our sales personnel, and our new sales guys just hadn't sold any of our services. So, I found myself sitting around alot. That gave me lots of time to figure out new ways to make Excel calculate Phythagorean records.

The good news is that I landed my dream job. The bad news is, that new job requires me to actually work all day. I also travel quite a bit now. This, of course, means I don't have as much free time to do blog posts. My evenings are also pretty full with a 14 year old son playing baseball, and an 11 year old daughter playing volleyball and softball. After I started my new job, I just became too busy and distracted to update the blog.

So, the last part of last season was never posted. I may eventually get those games posted, but don't count on it.

The 2008 season is less than a week away. I've decided that I will track the Royals again this year.

After all, this is the season to really start getting excited about the Royals. I’m hoping we hit that magic 63rd win sometime sooner than September 12.

Sam points out (and I agree wholeheartedly) that this year’s Royals are a vast improvement compared to when Dayton Moore took over. The icing on that cake is that Buddy Bell is gone, and from what I’ve seen so far, I like Trey Hillman (but, let’s hold out judgment. If he starts bunting in the first inning… Ugh…)

Plus, there’s a lot of interesting blog activity regarding the Royals this year. Hopefully, what I do here can somehow enhance the brilliance that Rany, Joe, and Sam bring to the scene.

So, I’m prepping my spreadsheet and getting ready to plug those first 2008 results in. Hopefully that first arrow will be green. We’ll see Monday night.

I hope you will join me.

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