Guidelines

• Content should be yours. If it’s a group of people or has significant amounts of content borrowed from someone else, give me a head’s up. I refuse to support plagiarism, even on a free-flowing platform like the internet.
• I’d like to blog for ever and ever, but for now, all content should have some reference to or commentary on the 2009 season.
• No politics (or political jokes)
• It doesn’t have to be incredibly well-written or deep.
• If your story captures something about your fandom in 2009 (or connected to this season), I’d like to hear about it.
• I do not discriminate against Red Sox fans. I would love to get to thirty readers so that I’d at least have a shot at having a reader for each team.
• However, posts that are thinly-veiled trashings of the Yanks are less likely to be published–with the exception of your team having just started/just finished a game or series with the Yanks.
• Cursing is absolutely allowed, but use your curses well. Misplaced curses or endless, senseless diatribes will be read with amusement, but won’t get “published.” (Example of a misplaced curse: “get fucking out of my way” should read “get out of my fucking way.” Obviously, interpretations can be broad, but think of the rhythm of whatever curse you’re using. If you have to say it twice to be sure it has the emphasis you want, you completely fucked up.)
• English only, please. I can read Spanish, but I’d prefer not to (it’s because I’m lazy).
• Time frame can be as small as the time it takes for a single play or as long as the season (obviously, I will accept stories about the 2009 season as a whole only after the actual season has happened, unless it’s satirical in nature).
• Stories can be as short as three sentences (or even one-word exclamations if I get a reference to what the hell you’re exclaiming about), but I’m drawing the line at 1,000 words (that’s roughly four double spaced pages in Microsoft Word). If it’s a crazy long but crazy good story, send it to me in parts. I’ll publish each on its own.
• You may always, always, always send in more than one story. There’s no limit on how many ideas, responses or diatribes you can send me.
• I may or may not make tiny edits (a flagrant grammar violation; an obvious misspelling; blatant historical inaccuracies; anything about batting average), but 99% of the time, the story is pure you.
• I do have one, absolute requirement: tell me which team you support. I don’t need your name or address or favorite television show. All I ask is that I know who you root for when you send me a story. Most of the time, I suspect it’ll be self-evident, but I’d like to put a line before an entry that reads like this: “From Dan, a Dodgers fan.”
• Tell me how you want credit given. If you want your name published, give me a head’s up. If you’d prefer to stay anonymous, tell me that too. If I don’t get direction, I will come up with a solution myself.

Examples of stories that I’d publish:

• An account of how you felt when your team pulled off a come from behind win
• A day at the ballpark with your child/friend/significant other
• A moment or memory that stood out to you
• Your irrational (man)love of a player
• Anticipation/dread of the season or an upcoming series
• A general story about how it feels to watch your team contend/fall apart/lose to the Pirates
• Sharing a baseball moment with someone else
• How you introduced someone else to baseball
• Meeting a player or other, similarly cool details
• How something in a game reminded you of something you experienced earlier as a fan (example? How a fan reaching over and messing with a potential triple–turning it into a GRD–reminded you of how much you loathe Steve Bartman)
• Critiques (more emotional than analytical please) of how sportswriters/talking heads are treating your team
• Fake clubhouse accounts, fake articles, or other satires (á la Batgirl)
• Responses to stories you’ve read on The Baseball Diarist