Nobody in my day-to-day life is likely to care much (if at all) about the changes happening in the Royals blog community today. If I tried to explain to any of my coworkers why I got a little bit choked up while reading a post about a blogger ceasing to blog, it wouldn’t make sense.
But where would I be without Royals blogs? That’s a serious question with an answer that is a little bit scary: without Royals blogs, I imagine myself still thinking about Ws and Ls as the things that best define a pitcher’s talent; lamenting low batting averages without looking for other outcomes that make a hitter valuable. And perhaps worst of all, watching a game by myself could mean I was watching a game alone.
It’s weird how much Royals fans online mean to each other. Baseball is just a game, but it’s not. It’s a time investment that would be wasted if we didn’t share in it meaningfully with other human people. And it’s awfully hard to find other human people in regular life who care the way we do, right? So Royals Review isn’t just a blog, and Will McDonald isn’t just a blogger. The site, under his direction, is our free support group, where we sarcastically plan victory parades in the Plaza whenever GMDM does something we don’t like. Back when Google Reader still had a Share function/community, a large number of my shared items were things McDonald wrote, accompanied by the note “Will is better at blogging than you.” None of my ShareBros ever argued that point.
Anyway, real life happens, and sometimes bloggers have to tend to that.
Now the crew at Royals Authority is stepping up to fill McDonald’s vacant throne. Craig, Clark, and Nick wonderful guys and tremendous bloggers as well. They’ve been supportive of me all along, and even included my work in their book one year. And really, it will be nice to have so much of the best Royals stuff in one place instead of two.
Best of luck to Will McDonald in life offline, and to the Royals Authority trio in their new home. Change is hard.
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