Did June’s blog rankings irk you as much as they irked me?  5th place?

Your awesomeness is insulted by any number greater than zero in an ascending ranking format.  But, if we must speak in rankings for your blog (and mlblogs.mlblogs.com seems to insist on doing so) you should be ranked solely in rational numbers with enormous denominators.  I can hear it now, “In three-one-millionth’s place, Disco Hayes.  Way behind in 1st place was Reed Johnson, and congrats to Rick Ankiel for climbing way out of contention to 2nd.”

And as long as we’re on Rick Ankiel, what is going on?  As your readers already know, Reed Johnson’s blog being ranked first for a second straight month is an insult Al Gore and those crazy Éclair-loving Ivy Leaguers that invented the internet with him.   In case you’ve yet to read Reed, I’ll save you the trouble with an excerpt, nay, an entire blog post of his (entitled Monday Monday):

I’m not done with my question yet.  Back to Ankiel, the guy posted twice in the month of June and passed you.  If this were a golf tournament, he started out Sunday 60 strokes behind you and after 2 holes packed it in, but they counted the round and awarded him a 64-under 6 to pass you on the leader board.  Well, that’s not a good analogy because we aren’t talking about golf at all, and we all know you went at least 4-under par on your round on Sunday–er June.  And since you had a 60 stroke lead we would have to assume you teed off after him.  This isn’t really working.  Well, you know what I mean, right?  Makes no sense?  I’m Ron Burgundy?

See, the thing is, it’s not even that I hold anything against Reed or Ankiel or Hunter or Molina (Bengie!  Chalk it up Berthiaume), it’s that the powers that be don’t respect the blog.  If you visit mlblogs.mlblogs.com (and I’m sure you do), there’s a column on the right that lists the pro blogs in the mlblogosphere.  Fourteen players are listed, three of whom are players ahead of you in the rankings.  The other eleven players listed posted a combined total of ONE post in the month of June, 2009.  Most of them have not posted at all in 2009.  Yet they are advertised blogs and your genius goes unnoticed.
 
In another side note, how do they get off convincing all these really good players to blog?  I mean like really good.  Holliday, Papi, Hanley, Ankiel, Torii, Lowe.  I take it Albert, Alex, and Manny were busy?  Come on mlblogs and Sharp (we’ll get to you soon enough, Sharp, don’t think you’re getting off easy on this one), how do you expect a dorky un-drafted free agent in Nebraska to get any blog love?  I can see how it went, “Hey Disco, come write a blog with some other players, it’ll be a blast, everyone will love you.  [Pause] No, just some other guys, players, you know.  [Pause] Oh, yeah, well, [Pause], if you have to know, it will be the Hall Of Fame classes of 2018-20 [Pause] and you, but I’m sure people will read your stuff.  [Pause] No, keep your chin up, buck-o.  You’ll be fine.  So it’s a yes?”  Perhaps it went like this, “Hey is this Zack Greinke? [Pause] [Pause] [Muffled voices in background with hand covering microphone] Alright, fine, can you blog anyway, Mr. Bannister? [Pause] Well, shoot, good thing we got a discount on URLs and server space.  Whatever, go ahead and write, Charlie. [Pause] Not even Charlie Hayes?  [Click] [Dial Tone]”

Sharp, it’s your turn; step on up to the table.  Forget everything you’ve just read.  This isn’t a conspiracy where mlblogs is trying to keep Disco under the radar for as long as possible to try to lock him up in arblogtration this off-season for an uber-discount.  No, his blog is famous and it’s getting more and more famous by the post.  What we have here is a situation where your marketing team has grossly misunderstood where the advertising market is and currently is barking up the wrong tree.  You have invested in Ankiel, Holliday, Hunter, and Lowe.  You probably spent decent money on them too.  But you are missing the real cash cow here.  You see, without any advertisement, without any help from anyone but his own fingertips and ego, Disco has carved out a decent piece of pie in the mlblog market.  He has the most loyal followers (unless you tell me something crazy like Julia comments religiously on other players’ blogs too) and is expanding his fan-base around the globe, not just local markets along team lines.  He appeals to the every man and woman, not just the baseball fan.  He’s done some studies on his nickname alone, but with his blog as a whole, he kills the 60-80 demographic with his donut advice (OK, admittedly kill was a bad verb choice here, but I’m rolling, so backspace is out of the question) and mothers 25-40 can’t get enough of his feces…wait that came out wrong, too…and his 1 Minute Mondays appeal to, well, um, probably someone…aha! perhaps non-English speakers because it’s less to translate.
 
So, Sharp, if your own name could in any way be used to describe your marketing strategy, I suggest you jump on this bandwagon sooner than later.  Jump on it, put billboards on the sides and fill it with loads of cash.  I’ll ask you to think of this.  What will happen when Disco makes the big leagues?  Huh?  Think of the blog then.  Think of the Peter Gammons ESPN special about his fairytale story from college walk-on to big league phenom.  “…aside from the fastball which resembles a local fair’s speed pitch booth, this kid is also a smart guy.  He scored an 800 on the math section of the SATs, dabbles in sabrmetrics and he’s quite witty, check out his blog at discohayes.mlblogs.com.  In Kansas City, Peter Gammons, [pause][wait][sneeze from Rachel Nichols][pause][chin nod][dramatic cough], E-S-P-N.”  Think of the traffic his site will generate when mlblogs begins to pretend like it exists.  Think of the possibility of Disco Music coming
back in vogue.