Goodbye, and I'll see you at the ballpark

With a heavy heart, but one full of hope, I announce the end of my tenure at Purple Row.

I have been offered a once-in-my-lifetime opportunity to take over as the Editor of BSN Rockies. I am excited about the chance to help grow something from the ground up, and I intend to attack my new responsibilities with the tenacity that I discovered in myself while writing for Purple Row, a site I was a fan of long before I became a contributing writer.

As many regular readers know, I applied to write here the day after my father passed away in January 2013. I was surprised to learn that I was among those chosen to join the staff. Little did I know that when Jeff Aberle and Bryan Kilpatrick took a chance on me, I gained not just a new career path, but a second family.

My time here has been nothing short of a dream. Our writers and editors, and even a few of our regular commenters, have become some of my best friends. I've learned so much more than I thought possible in three years, the biggest lesson being how much more there is to learn. I've grown exponentially as a writer, but more importantly, Purple Row has helped me grow as a person.

In a community where the arguments play a pivotal role and have a tendency to get heated, we make each other better and we all end up with the same home base: we are Rockies fans, and we all bleed purple.

I hope to take that spirit with me to BSN and provide cooperative, and hopefully competitive, content. I believe that The Denver Post was at its absolute best when it had The Rocky Mountain News to battle. I hope in short time, Purple Row and BSN can experience such a dynamic and that we continue to push each other to provide Rockies fans with the highest possible quality coverage of your favorite baseball team.

I cannot thank you all enough for these past three years. Everyone from Matt Gross, without whom I would not be here, to Eric Garcia McKinley, who has been more responsible for some of my best work than I have. From Holly, who kept us all honest(ish),to the Freemyers (Ryan and Jordan), who can argue about baseball even longer that I can. And to our newest members Nick Stephens, Bobby DeMuro, Connor Farrell, and Cameron Goeldner, who so quickly became a part of the family -- I thank you all.

Cam and SDCat were the first readers who ever identified themselves as fans of my work. Without you readers, we're just crazy people screaming down a well. I also gotta give thanks to Russ Oates, Sage Farron, and Andrew Martin, who in a very short time have become some of my closest friends, despite rarely seeing each other in real life. I have to thank Bryan for being a joy to work for and being a true mentor at a time when I needed one, and a real friend when I needed one of those even more. I love you all.

I wish I could thank everyone who deserves it but we'd be here all day reading a list of names and I think it's getting a little dusty in here. But I do have to thank Jeff and now Brandon Spano for saying "yes" and believing in me. Without completely spilling my guts, it's hard to describe how much that means and meant to me.

★ ★ ★

My father never got the chance to read anything I've published. He knew me as a musician. And so even though I've avoided doing so, I suppose it's ironic that in my final post at Purple Row I should break this rule and include some of my own song lyrics from something I wrote two lifetimes ago:

"And now it's time for me to say goodbye

I don't know what it is I'll find

But the time has come to wipe these tears from my mind

Close my eyes, and let my spirit fly"

I've never been good at saying "goodbye" so I won't, because it isn't really goodbye. Instead, I will only say this:

I'll see ya at the ballpark.