Even More FanFest: Blogging the Birds

…..that’s the great thing about baseball…it can be enjoyed with both sides of the brain!

It showed me that I definitely made the right choice in picking a blog to follow. I came across CC because of an article in SI 3 years ago. If I had picked OH or something along those lines, I probably wouldn’t be here (or there, or anywhere else on the blogs for that matter). We may be unique, but that makes it even better. Way to represent, Stacey.

Camdenchat is a nice mix of being able to get mad and show emotion about the team, without (usually) degenerating into crazy rumors and sportsradio-level buffoonery.

There’s several great Orioles Blogs out there (impressive, considering that the team’s been so bad for most of the Internet age), but Camden chat is the most like a community, I think.

Because, honestly, whats the point? In my mind, being a sports fan at the end of the day is about taking pride in accomplishments that ultimately are not your own and are not within your control. Its an inherently irrational act. Objective analysis may be useful to some degree in an attempt to measure those accomplishments, but it should never be looked as any more than a means to an end. Without the emotion that comes with being a fan, and the special sort of feeling that comes with the sting of losing just as much as the joy of winning, everything else is pointless.

The fact that this community hasn’t lost sight of that is what makes it so special to me. Sure, there may be endless debates about the merits of UZR, but every so often there’s a melmo thread. I think baseball in particular makes it easy to lose yourself in the infinite of amount of data and statistics, but ultimately there’s an emptiness in that. Statistics can’t express the most visceral reactions that keep you come back season after season. If you can’t sometimes embrace the irrationality of being a sports fan, not to mention an Orioles fan, then you might as well not even bother.

I only come on here becasue I get bird droppings every day and that sounds close enough to poo and so I laugh and thats a good way to start my morning.

On a more mature and serious note…poo.

thanks for supplying the love for writing and the emotions stacy! keep it coming.

would be most of the people on the MLB forums about the Orioles….

I was one of the few who stuck around for the forum, and I enjoyed it. It was worth hanging around for. I actually was one of the people who came up and said hi afterward. I sensed a little bit of tension up there between some of the bloggers. Was that true or am I just imagining things?

Stacey,

Great write up, and thanks for the work you are doing.
I have been with CC since year one, and have been out of touch with the community for business reasons for about a year.
While I have been “lurking” and read almost daily, the opportunity to chime in as often as I once did has been non-existent.
Myself and Mrs Elktonfan have relocated to the Philly burbs, and CC keeps my 40 plus years of O’s fandom fires burning brightly.
Emotion is what this all about – and I believe it has kept this great forum going for the past sorry years. We, as a CC community, share the HOPE that maybe this is the year, the game, the pitch, the at bat, the trade, the signing, the draft, the something that gets all of our dreams for a good baseball team to be a reality. CC lets all of HOPE together, and also lets us share how we feel when that hope is dashed, once again.

Thanks again for your work…