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Behold the Blogging Manager

Reporting from the Jock-o-sphere.

by Ryan Corazza

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"Eject me. Then I can blog without having to watch."

The calendar says it's spring. The weather in your neck of the country might suggest otherwise. But whether or not it's snowing outside your window or not, spring brings many things: a new baseball season, new green grass, new flowers budding and yes, new beautiful, bouncing blogs.

Here are a few to keep an eye on -- or maybe not keep an eye on.

Washington Nationals manager Manny Acta took to the keyboard last week to pen his first entry for MASNsports. A sample:

"Our pitching, despite being young, has a chance to be good," he writes. "Granted we still don't have the dominant #1 and #2, that most teams need to go all the way in October, but I'd rather have young guys (some already with MLB experience) than have older guys patching up our rotation. All of them have the desire to get better and stick together, and if we can get at least three of these guys to become consistent starters in the big leagues, then we'll be fine. You can always go get a #1 in the free agent market or find him in the draft…LOL!"

Yes, Acta just dropped an LOL. Yeesh. But parsing that out, there is some solid information here. Stop for a second and imagine a world where every MLB manager is blogging at the rate of a Gawker. Sure, a reporter can prod a manager about why he pulled his starter in the fourth inning of a tie game for no apparent reason, but there's only so much time in a press conference for one to ask about a manager's decisions.

Think if a manager took the time out after every ballgame to not only analyze his team's play, but to go in depth and talk about why certain moves were made in regards to matchups and statistics.

This would be incredibly interesting, but I shudder to think what Dusty Baker's comment section would look like.


As it did last year, the NHL is rolling out a host of celebrity bloggers for the playoffs. Some -- like Kevin Smith a season ago -- updated frequently. Others like The Hills star Lauren Conrad, did not. The lineup for this postseason features the likes of Bill Burr, David Boreanaz, Colin Ferguson, Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott, Jessica Rose, Teddy Sears, Syd Butler, Thorsten Kaye, Jason Reitman and Willliam Fichtner.

If you've never heard of half of these people, you're not alone.


Washington Redskins wide receiver Devin Thomas has recently started a blog on his Web site. In his latest/second-ever entry, Thomas writes about getting close with his quarterback, Jason Campbell, via video games.

"I'm hooking Jason up with the online gaming so we can play basketball and football online," he writes. "Have a little fun and keep building that chemistry. I have to go over to his house and hook it up for him. I'm pretty good at the games, but I don't know if he's been practicing. I'm going to test him out and see what he's got."

"We're playing a lot of NBA 2K9 right now. It's a big thing to get our minds off football. Honestly, a lot of guys don't like Madden, a lot of guys play the college football instead because it's more fun. I'm on the game but I rarely play Madden, even though I won the NFL Rookie Challenge last year. When I do play it I'm usually too worried about me in the game getting my stats up."


Of course, no new list can be complete without a mention of Twitter, right? Over the weekend, Fox started to ramp up its Twitter account for baseball, @MLBONFOX.

You can read such brilliance as Joe Buck whining about the cold in the booth … or Mark Grace whining about the cold in the booth.

Is this another Twitter account we can do without? Likely. But at least they're real. We hope.


Elsewhere …



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