We are 12 years old today.
12 years is a long time on the internet. We beat Twitter to life by a little over three months. And, back then, Minor Leaguer was Little Leaguer.
Since our birth, the Jays are 985-959.
It seems strange to start a baseball site up in December, in the dead of the off season. I guess it gave the site time to build up a following before the first GameThread. The GameThread for the season opener had 112 comments.
When the season rolled around, the Blue Jays had a rotation of Roy Halladay, Ted Lilly, A.J. Burnett, Casey Janssen and Gustavo Chacin. Actually Josh Towers started the season in the rotation, but an ERA over 8 doesn't inspire teams to keep sending you out to the mound. And rookie Shaun Marcum got some starts in the second half of the season.
Vernon Wells led the team in RBI with 106 and Troy Glaus led the team with 38 home runs. Reed Johnson and Russ Adams shared the leadoff spot, at least to start the season, but Adams hit like Russ Adams and, by the end of April, he was hitting at the back of the order. And, by mid-season, Shea Hillenbrand would point out that the ship was sinking and would be quickly traded off to the Giants. By the end of the 2007 season, he'd be out of baseball.
Things have changed a fair bit. Back then the Blue Jays had someone named John Gibbons managing the team. They were trying to remake the team, making some trades and some free agent signings. The team added Lyle Overbay, A.J. Burnett, B.J. Ryan and Troy Glaus all in that first month of BBB's life (well, Ryan was signed about a week before BBB started).
The team would finish 2nd, but still 10 games back of the Yankees.
Getting back to start of the site, the first post, welcoming people to the new site, is here. For some reason the byline says VoxMediaUser61249 now. It was written by Marc Normandin, who currently writes for the SB Baseball main page. The first real story was about the trade for Lyle Overbay. The poll on the trade was very positive, 78% were happy with the trade (a total of 23 voters).
Marc didn't last long on the site. Mark W. and Slitheringslider soon took over. Then Hugo joined in 2007. Hugo was the reason I joined, he was always fun to read and I loved the obscure song lyrics he used as post titles. Through his titles, I found a lot of great music that I likely would have never heard. Hugo took a break in 2008 and I filled in for him and I've been here since. A couple of months later, Hugo came back and we ran the site together for awhile, but his real life job got in the way.
Over the years we've had lots of very good writers join us: JohnnyG, Jessef, masterkembo and Woodman665 (Jasper Bosman) joined in soon after I started. In 2011 Minor Leaguer joined. Scott C. joined us in Jan of 2013. We’ve also had posts from Nick Ashbourne, Jared Book, Michael Bradburn, Gerse, Damaso's Burnt Shirt, Jared Macdonald, Noah Sherman, Mike Hannah, Kevin Papetti, Sean Herman, eelliott29, Jake Sinclair and Cole Shelton. I know I’m missing some, I apologize to any I have missed.
Matt W started doing posts for us in March of 2014 and now it is hard to imagine the place without him. Matt Gross came to us in the Troy Tulowitzki trade. Mark Colley and kateincali joined us this year. We can always use more writers, if you would like to play in our sandbox, sent me an email.
And thanks to Bowling_Guy25 and Gerse for doing a great (if thankless) job as moderators. They save me from having to be watching all threads at all times.
If you want some stats. we have had 11,666 (plus or minus a couple) posts on the site (not counting GameThreads). We've had 2422 FanPosts (we can always use more). And we have 9,761 members.
SB Nation says I’m at 8235 posts and 117,572 comments (I think I need therapy), which is likely why I often go for days thinking that I’ve said everything there is to say about the team
So thank you all for coming to read, thank you for your fan posts and comments, we wouldn't do this without you (because, you know, if you guys didn't come to the site, SB would have fired us long ago). The best part about the site is the friends I've made because of it. It's more fun now than back when I was the only one in the game threads.
I’m drinking a bottle glass of wine in honor of the big day.