We Welcome Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes to AZSH

AZ Sports Hub would like to officially welcome ByrnesBlogger1! We just co-launched her blog, Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes, by moving it from MLBlogs to AZSH. She avidly blogs about Eric Byrnes and the Diamondbacks. We are happy to have her on board as we expand out our Diamondbacks coverage. Thanks for coming on board ByrnesBlogger1! Read her first post below, but make sure to visit the site by clicking here.

Welcome to Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes. And thanks to AZ Sportshub’s co-founders, Greg Esposito and Matt Blake, who invited me to join AZ Sportshub and who worked very hard to set up a site the I hope will be a great experience for fans of Eric Byrnes, the Diamondbacks, and baseball in general.

My name is Kellia Ramares, but you’ll know me online as ByrnesBlogger1. The alias comes from the fact that although some people call me Eric Byrnes’ biggest fan, I don’t think I am, even among ordinary fans who are not part of his family or social circle. But I venture to guess that nobody writes about him as much as I do, so I will claim the title of #1 blogger.

I live in Oakland, CA, which is where I discovered Byrnesie. I work part-time in the news department of radio station KPFA in Berkeley as a board operator. I occasionally do news stories for them and do some freelance journalism for radio and the Internet as well. (See the "About" page on the navigation bar or the box on the right sidebar that lists my other Internet presences for more details).

I began the ByrnesBlog on the MLB.com web site in August of 2005. All the old posts have been transferred to AZ Sportshub so, if you don’t know me from MLB.com, you can familiarize yourself with what I’ve been doing by checking out the posts in the "About the Blog" section on the top left side bar, and the article that accompanies my interview with Eric in San Francisco last September in the "Audio" section of the navigation bar just above the sidebars. You can play the interview from there or from the podcast player at the top of the right sidebar.

If you want to delve deeper into the history of the blog, you can choose by Category or by month in the Archive both are available in the nav bar. You can also look at the "Archives" further down the right sidebar, where they are listed again along with a calendar. Numbers on the calendar that are bold and underlined represent days on which I posted. So if you are interested in knowing whether I posted on a specific day, you can check the calendar, and if I did, you can click on the date to see the post(s). (e.g. Go back to Sept 28^th, click on the date and you’ll see I wrote a post titled "They’re In". Click on the title and you can read the post I wrote about the Diamondbacks clinching a berth in the playoffs.

But while I’m proud of the past, I’m excited about the future. AZ Sportshub is a site built by and for AZ sports fans. My stat counter on the MLB site told me a had a lot of visitors from AZ, but I rarely heard from them. I am hoping that the fans who visits AZSH are the kind of fans who wants to play an active role in sports discussion. There’s lots of things we can do together if you’re willing to participate, whether or not you live in Arizona. In fact, I’m going to need your participation to build a community and not just feel like I’m talking to myself. So:

Leave comments. Feel free to disagree with me or someone else. Just keep it civil and, as sportscaster Jim Rome says on his radio show "The Jungle": "Have a take. Don’t suck."

Vote in the polls. I’m starting you off with two of them. They’re there to take the pulse of the community and I promise you no hanging chads or other shenanigans.

Listen to the podcasts. Right now there’s a short interview I did with Eric in San Francisco last September. Granted it’s a little rough. I hadn’t done field journalism in a few years. (One of the privileges of seniority, at least at KPFA, is that after a while, you don’t have to go out to cover stories, you can let to stories come to you by covering reports, or personalities, if that’s your thing, rather than events where you have to go outside where the weather might be bad or the cops unfriendly). I’m also not (yet) a sports journalist so the questions may not have been the best. But listen and tell me what you might have asked or tell me what you learned about Eric that you didn’t know before the cast. With that kind of feedback, I can be better next time.

We have Winter Meetings this week and right now it looks like I’ll have two interviews. Whom do you want to hear about? What do you want to know?

Are you interested in the intersection between baseball and politics, economics, sociology, etc? Let’s talk. I’m going to the Bonds arraignment Friday. Think he’s getting a raw deal or just what he deserves? Should he get into the Hall of Fame or the House of Detention? Should Pete Rose still be barred from the Hall of Fame for betting on baseball when a casino has its name draped all over the dugouts at Chase Field? Let me hear your thoughts on ticket prices. How much are bleacher seats in your city and how have the prices changed in ten years? Talk about the removal of the games from free local TV next season in AZ.

Be my eyes and ears in Arizona! I don’t have much money and haven’t been able to afford traveling outside the SF Bay Area since 2002. I’d love to go to Tuscon for Spring Training; I’d love to be in Phoenix for Opening Day. I’d love to go to NYC for the All Star Game. (I’m actually a native New Yorker). Things may change, but right now, the money isn’t there. But you are there. Are you going to Spring Training, Opening Day, or the All Star Game? Are you a decent amateur photographer willing to let me post your photos? Are there any budding sports journalists (of any age or gender) out there who would let me post their video or audio? All I could give you is credit and publicity but like my dad used to say "it beats a blank."

Connect me with the organization! Do you have an in? Do you know a Diamondbacks player, coach, scout, or front office person? Do you know someone on the grounds crew, or someone who works concessions. Do Gracie, Daron, Todd or "The Gub’nah!" know you on sight (and not run away when they see you)? I’m not looking for someone to be Deep Throat. Just looking for folks who will point people in the organization to the blog and let then know that I am open to interviews. I’d like to build up the Rolodex top to bottom.

Last, but definitely not least, are you an Eric Byrnes fan? Are you one of those folks in the outfield who wave those white 22’s? I’d love to know how that got started! Have you met Byrnesie and have a cool Eric Byrnes story? Please share. Have you been following his career since before Arizona and are celebrating his emergence as a team leader? This blog is the place for you. Do you think he can be better still? (He does. He told me so.) Let’s discuss where he needs improvement and how he can go about achieving it.

As I finish this article, I hear that Carlos Quentin has been traded to the White Sox. The Hot Stove is heating up. Let’s get cookin’!

ByrnesBlogger1

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Tags: Eric Byrnes