The Sporting Orange Notebook: September 8th

It’s been a while since we acknowledged people much more talented than us. So let’s make up for it with today’s Notebook.

- We poked fun at Doberman on The Diamond for saying the Devil Rays should be contracted, but he’s still our favorite baseball writer. Friday, he cut ties with Rick Ankiel after Ankiel’s ties with a Florida pharmacy and HGH were revealed. I tend to think HGH is not as bad as steroids. But, as Doberman points out, this is the second time a Cardinals folk hero has been proven to be not as natural as one might think.

- As with everything Gatorade related, we turn to Darren Rovell. While I’m disappointed Gatorade has to follow VitaminWater and Powerade in creating a ‘light’ drink, I guess it makes business sense. What I don’t understand is why the hell would anyone want to drink anything with half of the energy? Gatorade was originally designed for athletes, so as Rovell says, people who drink Gatorade with pizza, are actually use it the wrong way. (I drink one each morning.) But, Gatorade has electrolytes and energy, so it could act like a morning boost. And VitaminWater and Powerade were not invented by scientists at UF, so they automatically suck.

- The Big Picture’s latest installment in their fantastic blogger interviews series is one of our favorites, Orson Swindle. When we first started The Sporting Orange, Orson was one of the guys we looked at in terms of who we wanted to emulate. Of course, it was Hanson’s bright idea to email Orson and tell him to check out our website. As always, Hanson is 100% wrong.

5. EDSBS gets a great readership now. The content speaks for itself, but it needs to get out there somehow -- especially at first. How'd the initial promotion of the site go? Message boards? Email strings? And a piece of advice, if you will, for some smaller sites how to build a steady, interactive readership?

We got an RSS reader and subscribed to other people's blogs -- participating in that seemed to push things. (Can't remember if we did the "Hey, got this other awesome thing over at my blog" shit in comments, either. If we did, we apologize, because that shit is annoying with a capital "asshole.")

Luckly, Orson didn’t hold that against us because he suggested us for another job. Which was nice. -MLM