My 1 year anniversary

Hey! I just realized that I have had this blog going for 1 year! I would like to thank all 3 of my followers and my mom. I would like to thank all of the players who have commented to me about their careers, in and out of Kentucky.

It is funny, when I started this hugely successful blog (I would again like to thank my 3 followers, and sometimes reader, mom) I really didn't know where I was going with it. I love baseball, travelling and Kentucky, and I wanted to start a blog dealing with those topics. I guess I have, and I have also used my other blog (kentuckytravels.blogspot.com) to very loosely cover these topics.

At first I thought I would cover my own baseball road trips from Kentucky. Then, I was able to get some responses form retired players, and minor leaguers about their playing days. I would ask about any stories they might have about playing in Kentucky or even near the state. Now, I am writing about pretty much anything involving baseball. I am still trying to keep the focus of pro baseball in Kentucky.

I thought now might be a nice time to mention some of my favorites in baseball. Here are some of my favorites. I cannot explain much of my reasoning, in general, but here they are:

Favorite baseball books:

Man, this is a hard one. I love reading any baseball book. I think most autobiographies, especially of big stars, are fairly inaccurate (I love Pete Rose as a player, but read his two autobiographies back to back. He changes his stories some in each).

Also, there are a couple of "classic" baseball books that I won't mention that I had trouble finishing.

I have really enjoyed reading books by umpires. The umpire life is interesting, and their interaction with the players, fans, unions, etc. is fun to read. Possibly my all time favorite baseball book is "Everything Happens in Chillicothe" about former Frontier League umpire, Max McLeary. Max McLeary is a one eyed umpire. Read that last sentence again. Anyway, Max pretty much loved being an umpire, and he loved working with one of my favorite leagues, the Frontier. Mike Shannon travels around with Max for a season writing about the adventures of Max. I need to get a real review of this future classic up. Max sounds like a great guy, respected by the players, but he deals with family issues and those sort of things too.

I am really excited about the fact that it is easy for players to self publish these days. With that, there are a lot of players putting there stories out there in books.

I just read Nellie Kings book, reviewed on this blog, and that was a fun read. I really appreciate a good, clean book with fun baseball stories.

Favorite ballparks:

I love every ballpark. Some have more interesting features, some are simply in fun baseball towns, and some just have great fans at every game.

The Bridgeport Bluefish in Connecticut had a really unique park that features a real rail line right behind the outfield wall. A train came by every 20 minutes or so. There is a big smoke stack visible too, giving the park a bit of an industrial look. Very unique.

Also in the Atlantic League, the York Revolution (Pennsylvania) have a cool park. They have the tallest outfield fence in pro baseball, and a cannon that is fired after a player on the home team hits one out!

The Mahoning Valley Scrappers (Niles, OH), the Washington Wildthings (Washington, PA.) and the Florence Freedom (Florence, KY.) all have very green skylines past the outfield wall. You feel very relaxed, and you feel like you are way out in the country watching a game, though all are very close to local towns and malls.