Today marks the two year anniversary of my first post at Purple Row, and the inauguration of the site.
I had been writing my previous blog, Baseball on Blake Street, for about three years (on and off) when SB Nation co-founder Tyler Blezinski approached me about doing the SBN blog for the Rockies. I was reluctant, honestly, as I had been approached by other networks prior to that and declined -frankly because I was unfamiliar with the other bloggers at the time on those networks. I had read Athletics Nation, however, and frequently read John Sickels' work at ESPN, so this invitation wasn't as easily dismissed.
After scoping out some of the details about my autonomy with the new blog (pretty much complete) and about who was going to profit from the sweat equity I put into it (there's bucketloads of money in blogging, let me tell you, it's like the oil industry, only more evil) and what the overarching goal of SBN was (world conquest) I decided to take the leap.
At that point, Tyler gave me two options for the name of the blog, both having to do with the seating at Coors Field:
Rockpile Blast!
or
Purple Row
I can't remember for sure if the exclamation mark was included in the Rockpile Blast! name or not, but I always pictured it that way. At any rate, that became moot when I chose the more staid Purple Row moniker. From that day forward, we became George Plimpton rather than Hunter S Thompson. Okay, so maybe a little bit of the Hunter S filters through every now and then, but really, Rockpile Blast! still seems kind of silly.
Anyway, the first post at Purple Row was this gem right here, and as the comments show, my first reader was apparently Franchise26, aka Dan Lucero at Up in the Rockies. The next day, Russ commented for the first time. Since then, many other users have come aboard and all have helped shape the Row into what it is today: seemingly a support group of enablers where we can all share our griefs with the team as well as our hopes that someday soon the story of the past few years will be different.
I kept the site kicking throughout that first season in 2005, but ran headlong into some off field issues during the offseason, when Russ was invited to take over blogging duties for the community. I finagled my way back into the picture by Spring, though, and now with this season we've added a couple more writers in malakian and David Ohno to help round out our offerings. Of course, my flakiness remains -as anybody who's noticed the missing Scaling the Rox recaps can attest- so the help is more than welcome.
At any rate, I'm curious when everybody here first discovered Purple Row, how long you lurked before saying anything, and what your overall impressions are. Well you ready your responses, I'll ready a game post. Happy Birthday PR!