Wow, I appear to be alive

I haven't posted here in a very long time. I apologize for not being more open about taking a hiatus from sports blogging when it began. I certainly didn't expect it to last for as long as it did.

I'm in Indiana now, which might make my ability to keep up on the Cleveland Indians difficult this season. (And it will certainly make things confusing as the Triple-A team out here is the Indianapolis Indians, who are not, of course, affiliated with the Cleveland team.)

Let's start with my final comment on the Indians' 2007 season, several months late: If you had told me at the beginning of the year all that would happen, I probably would have taken it, but, of course, once you make it to the playoffs, nothing feels good but winning, so it feels like a disappointment at the time. Still, I'm ultimately pleased with the result.

Now, to get back to all this. I stopped blogging, not because I got tired of sports or because I didn't think the Indians could win, or any of a number of things. I stopped blogging because, truth be told, I hate the majority of the sports blogosphere. Not the ultimate idea behind sports blogging, which is that the mainstream sports media doesn't know what they're talking about the majority of the time, which is a statement I have openly agreed with. No, the problem I have is the reason this blog is called "Serious Dismay Sports" in the first place.

I don't understand people making themselves so unhappy over something that matters so little in the long run, and basing their personal worth on their ability to suck it up and continue paying attention. I should understand it, I'm also a sci-fi geek, but I don't. When someone starts hating a show they watch, they're encouraged by others to quit watching. But if you do that with sports, you're a Bad Fan.

I do understand the misogyny and, let's be quite honest, quite often the racism that shows up in the sports media (mainstream and blogosphere). The blogosphere is no different from the mainstream sports media in this regard, on the whole. And maybe this doesn't matter to you if you're a white dude, or if you're a woman or non-white but have bought into some of the racism and sexism in American culture. But if you haven't bought in, you might understand why its neverending presence in something I'm trying to enjoy is upsetting. And I guess here my problem is the failure of the sports blogosphere as a whole to really present that many alternative viewpoints outside of "understands how sabermetrics works." (Disregarding, of course, some of my favorite bloggers.)

And ultimately, I stopped because it stopped being fun and started being work. I was spending too much time on this, hating every minute of it, and getting very little out of it.

I don't know if I'm going to continue this blog starting this spring training and for the 2008 season. I might, since I know the start of the season always gets me so excited I feel I have to blog. But I don't know that I'll be updating daily, or even on a regular basis. I don't know that I'll be interacting so much with the commenters--although I do, you know, post on game threads and the like at Let's Go Tribe.

I know that the blogosphere isn't all bad. I love many of my favorite bloggers as much as I hate my least favorite bloggers. I think this is merely a matter of focusing on the ones I like. That is, maybe, I need to be a little less full of Serious Dismay in 2008. (Which is not to say there won't be some.)


So... How about that Mitchell Report?