This is me.

Welcome to my blog. I am a national baseball writer for AOL FanHouse. Before that I was the Giants and A’s beat writer for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, which is why I started this blog to cover those teams.

So I’m not a “blogger.” I’m a writer who blogs.

After graduating from Ohio University and writing for the Los Angeles Times for five years, I came to the Press Democrat to cover the Giants and A’s in 1997. In 11 years at the PD, I covered the playoffs six times, including the 2002 World Series. I saw Barry Bonds break a whole bunch of records, including the Big One.

I stuck around long enough to win some awards, most notably for
this, and to earn a Hall of Fame vote.

All of that newspaper stuff is over now. For a while after leaving the newspaper business, I was an “independent web journalist.” That’s what I called myself when I was simply blogging for the sheer love of baseball, writing and to make some spare change from you nice folks clicking on my ads. However, I was lucky enough to find someone outside the newspaper business who appreciated my newspaper experience. AOL Sports, whose outlet is called FanHouse, is just about the only media outlet in this country that is growing.

FanHouse (don’t get hung up on the name) is moving toward being a home for experienced writers from all over the country covering all the major sports.

Once I started working at FanHouse, I continued this blog because I’ve got a lot of years worth of knowledge about the Giants and A’s filling my head, and a lot of opinions about those teams. Frankly, a national baseball audience doesn’t really care what I think about Kevin Frandsen, but you guys do, so this blog isn’t going anywhere. The posts may be a little less frequent than they were before FanHouse, but they’ll always be here.

Hope you keep coming back every day. Right after you’ve checked out FanHouse.

Feel free to drop me an email at jfletcher@pacbell.net!