When I was in high school (which wasn’t too long ago, class of 2007), the Mets age of the internet was just about in full swing (minus #MetsTwitter). When I started high school, that wasn’t the case.
As a high school student in Baltimore, I didn’t really have too much access to Mets news, especially in my freshman and sophomore year. Back then there was Mets.com, a few other Mets sites I didn’t know about yet, the Baltimore Sun if the Mets did something major, 20 second clips on ESPNNEWS and Baseball Tonight, the WFAN signal I could pick up on a clear night (sorta) and TBS when the Mets played the Braves.
For me, searching for any Mets news I could find, the baseball guides that come out of the start of a season became a yearly routine. They would come out, and I would pick them up at the local bookstore or grocery store. Guides like Athlon Sports, you know guides that change their cover for whatever major league market they are in, spend about two to four pages on each team etc.
Looking back on how technology has changed how we get baseball news (hell, Metsblog.com is still the go to, but you can faster information following Baron’s and Cerrone’s twitter feed) these guides don’t have as much of a use to me any more. Like most physical print, they suffer from being behind signings that happened after publication and sometimes are clearly written by someone who doesn’t know the team.
For example, one guide, I’ll leave the name unknown, for this year, listed key series for each team this year. For the Mets they named the Diamondbacks saying, “The Mets don’t have rivalry history with the Diamondbacks, but they will now since the series occurs during David Wright Printed Canvas Night.”
Yep. We are going to have a rivalry now with the Diamondbacks. Giveaway days tell all.
Looking at the rack of these magazines, which have exploded with the amount of people playing Fantasy Baseball now, or at least with how the economy around Fantasy Sports now, I feel a sense of nostalgia. I also realize how lucky I am to live in NYC area with internet access.
GO METS. BEAT THE DIAMONDBACKS.
