Special Announcement: Chicks Dig The Long Ball
We reveal Our future plans for Blogs Of Steele...
As promised, we have a special announcement to make here at Blogs Of Steele…
We’re going all in on Baseball.
Okay, to be more specific, we have tweaked our strategy and approach and, going forward, Blogs Of Steele will be more Baseball driven in terms of content.
The same applies to The Andrew Steele Podcast. You can listen to an announcement regarding the Pod right HERE.
Back to Blogs Of Steele, however. We’re going to delve in to what this announcement means, how the site will operate going forward, what will change and why we ultimately came to this decision.
Let’s dive right in…
The New Strategy
Firstly, and as mentioned right at the top, Blogs Of Steele will now be a site dedicated to covering Baseball. The main focus will be MLB, obviously, but our content will also cover the minors and college ball.
What does that mean?
Ultimately, every day we will tackle the latest hot talking points across Baseball, be it the future of superstar Shohei Ohtani, Luis Arraez’s chase for history and the continued downfall of my New York Mets.
Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that last one I must admit.
There will be opinion pieces, podcast episodes with anticipated guests who are locked in on specific teams and topics, long-form stories, fun and quirky features and lots more.
To make it simple - every single day we will be talking about Baseball. What is more awesome than that?!
Plus, Blogs Of Steele really wants to take you deeper into the game by involving players and coaches entrenched in both the minors and in College Baseball. Those figures and personalities will become a big part of what we’re attempting to do both here and over on ‘The Andrew Steele Podcast.’
We’re going to have one - hopefully two - Baseball guests on the Podcast this week, and my hope and plan is to eventually have players, coaches, scouts and media personalties from all Baseball backgrounds come on too.
And, hey, this is just the start. We’ll naturally look to advance our coverage as we build things here, but I know in my bones that this is absolutely the right approach to take and I’m pumped to start rolling out content for you all to enjoy.
So, basically, if you’re a Baseball fan, then Blogs Of Steele will be the place for you to come and get your daily Baseball fix.
What Will Change?
First and foremost, there will be a lot more Baseball coverage. Obviously.
Outside of that, I’ll be scaling back the coverage of other sports in order to establish Blogs Of Steele as a one-stop shop for all things Baseball.
If you aren’t a Baseball fan, however, don’t panic because there will still be something for everyone on these pages. I’ll look to do at least a couple of non-Baseball articles a week as we get this thing moving.
I’ll still be giving you my thoughts on other sports but I’ll tackle the NFL, NHL and the NBA with more of a New York flavor given The Big Apple is where I call home. All my sports teams are New York based and that’s where I’ve done a lot of my work, so it will be fun to really dive into those subjects with more of a fan’s hat on.
Be it the rollercoaster ride that is going to be Aaron Rodgers and the Jets, the latest step in the Knicks’ bid to be relevant again, the Mets being an absolute dumpster fire (there will be a lot on this) and the Rangers trying to pry open their win-now window a little bit longer, I will always dedicate time towards chatting and writing about the teams and subjects that are close to my heart, besides Baseball.
As will the Giants, the Yankees, the Nets, the Islanders, the Devils, the Liberty and, hey, we may even give the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres some love too. They are technically in the New York area, after all.
Plus, once the regular seasons for the NFL, NHL and NBA get underway, I’ll publish a weekly round-up - either on Friday or Saturday - of things that either caught my eye, bemused me or that I’m just dying to talk about from around the sports world. There’s only so much talking to myself I can do before people start accusing me of becoming a mad man, after all.
Also, some features I’m really hyped about, like my Alternative Mt. Rushmore, Baseball Players I Love to Watch Right Now and my Search For an MLS Team, will still have a home here and they will play a big role in the overall content plan.
And, of course, I’ll still be a open book and I’ll allow my steady stream of consciousness to make its way onto these pages every now and then, as I did for this post I published on Father’s Day, which proved to be a resounding hit.
So, while Blogs Of Steele is shifting towards becoming more of a Baseball specific site, there will still be lots of fun stuff for those of you who may not be as mad about America’s Favorite Pastime as I am.
Why Is This Happening?
Good question.
Well, for starters, journalists are famous for not owning very good business sense at all. I don’t know why but, as a rule of thumb, all journalists, and creative people in general, are pretty bad when it comes to business and making money.
I’ll be the first to admit that trying to make this newsletter and website one that makes money has been challenging to say the least. After all, I just open up a laptop and start writing. I didn’t go to business or marketing school. And I’m historically and comically bad with numbers too. Like it isn’t even funny.
Us creative types were not born or made to balance the ability to create magic from a bunch of words with an intricate knowledge of how to generate a flood of cash.
I wish.
Which brings us here. I realized about a month ago that Blogs Of Steele had become a mish-mash of random stuff and I didn’t have any idea what the purpose of the site was. And, if I didn’t have a clue, how on earth are you, my brilliant readers and subscribers, meant to know?
As a result, I decided to go back to the drawing board, lean on my trusted yellow legal pads and attempt to work out the best way forward. This whole process included a lot of scribbling notes and random nonsense (and yes, a boatload of stupid-ass scribbles that I have no idea what they mean looking back) and, to be brutally honest, some soul-searching too.
I wasn’t happy with where the website or the podcast was. It was kind of floating along with no real purpose or intent, and I also felt I wasn’t delivering on the promises I made when I first launched this thing a few months ago.
Another incredibly large obstacle I faced was the fact that I’m not ESPN, I’m not Yahoo Sports and trying to cover every single sport was just a lost cause. Not only was I spreading myself far too thin, but attempting to provide a leading voice on news events across the four major sports was taking away precious time that should have been devoted on producing unique and engaging content that will make Blogs Of Steele stand out on its own.
Trying to keep up with every single event across the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB, not to mention attempting to run another site (which I’ve now closed in order to focus all my attentions on Blogs Of Steele) was just fool’s gold. The saying ‘Jack of all trades, a master of none’ springs to mind. I’d rather focus the majority of my attention on one sport and produce incredible stories, rather than come out with a slew of average content across a number of different sports.
I mean, let’s be honest, very few people are going to come to me for a NHL Free Agency Live Blog. There’s far more established sites out there for that kind of content.
Additionally, I found that I wasn’t writing about Baseball nearly as much as I would have liked, and that really proved to be a spark for change. After all, Baseball was where I cut my teeth as a freelance sports journalist in America and it is a sport I absolutely love and I just find it so much fun to write about. And, with the rule changes and the flood of elite young talent currently taking the game by sport, I really do believe that Baseball is enjoying a resurgence for the ages right now.
And I want to be a bigger part of that.
Hence today’s announcement.
After weighing everything up, it just made perfect sense to hit the re-set button and shift towards becoming a site that predominately covers baseball. I get to continue to write about a sport I love and, without sounding too big-headed, I was starting to make real headway as a Baseball writer.
Plus, by devoting the bulk of our coverage to one sport, it will actually allow me the time to go out and interview players and coaches and scouts, and then come up with really meaningful storytelling that you won’t find anywhere else. Because that means the world to me.
After all, I was raised in the world of old school journalism where reporting and the written word are King. I love to pick up a copy of Baseball America or a newspaper or go to The Athletic and sink my teeth into a gritty, 10,000 word + plus long-form article that transports me. That’s what journalism and storytelling is all about.
Sadly, sports journalism - and journalism in general - isn’t exactly in a good place right now. Only last week we saw The New York Times announce that they were blowing up their Sports Department and shedding it entirely, and handing over the keys to The Athletic.
That was the latest in a long line of crushing body blows that this industry has had to absorb, and the clown show at Twitter coupled with the hot takes and empty ‘everyone is a journalist’ social media content world we now live in hasn’t exactly helped either.
Real journalism, real reporting and real storytelling absolutely still matters and there’s enough good people busting their asses out their to try and ensure that it always will.
That’s why this site was created. I set Blogs Of Steele up so that I could write about what I wanted when I wanted without having some stuffy, rich overlord trying to water down my opinions. I also chose Substack as my platform because there’s no glitchy, in-your-face ads to disrupt your reading pleasure.
Despite the slew of knocks my profession has taken, and continues to take, launching this passion project still stands as the best thing I’ve ever done and I really do believe that this is just the beginning. Now I’ve worked through some early kinks and settled on an identity for the site, I can’t wait to grow Blogs Of Steele and establish it as one of the best Baseball websites out there, with a sprinkling of other engaging content and sports stories to boot.
There’s now such a high ceiling for this site and I’m just excited to get things going again, write a lot of Baseball stuff and produce and provide the best possible content I can for you guys every single day.
It’s going to be a blast!
And, before I sign off, I want to thank all my current subscribers for your continued support. It means the world to me.
For new visitors, particularly Baseball fans looking to see what we’re all about, welcome!
Please feel free to subscribe below.
We will be pivoting to some paid content moving forward, but I’ll share further details nearer the time.
Nothing else will change. As I said above, there will still be a handful of other sports and my odd ramblings sprinkled throughout our Baseball content moving forward, so there will still be a little bit of something for everyone.
I’m so pumped to get this new chapter in the history of Blogs Of Steele officially started.
Let’s go!
Oh, before I do, I’ll leave you with this to celebrate the theme of the day…
Take me out to the ball game.
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack.
I don’t care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team.
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out.
At the old ball game!
