Posted By Jeff Fletcher on January 7, 2009 12:10 pm

There is no shortage of people sitting in their mothers’ basements and pontificating on the web about everything under the sun. In fact, you can barely swing a dead cat without hitting one.

So, why, should you invest one more second of your valuable internet surfing time – you know, that time when you’re supposed to be working – on another baseball blog?

Well, this blog is different. I am not just some guy off the street. I’m a professional baseball writer off the street. For 11 years, I was the Giants and A’s beat writer for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. I am a card-carrying member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. I was one of the 32 people who picked Tim Lincecum for the Cy Young, and I am one of 700ish people who voted for Rickey Henderson to be inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer.

I won awards for this, this, and this, and of course there were dozens of other stories that should have won awards.

Reason I’m here, rather, than still slaving away at a keyboard for the newspaper is that the newspaper industry is, to put it mildly, in decline. Sadly, newspapers are one cut above record stores on the Irrelevant-O-Meter. I had been trying to get out of the newspaper industry for a while before the industry beat me to the punch and kicked me out. Something about the economy, they said.

So I sat around the house, a baseball writer with no place to write. When I’d have an opinion about something going on with the Giants or A’s, I’d turn to my 5-year-old son and tell him. His usual reply was “Dad, can I have some more goldfish crackers?”

So here I am, baseball blogger No. 356,345.

Hopefully, as you keep reading, you’ll realize I’m not like the other 356,344, though.