In the gravelly words of Staind's Aaron Lewis, "It's been a while." Yes, this is my first post of any kind on this blog in just under four months and I am starting it off with a Staind lyric. WELCOME BACK! In all seriousness though, I have been away from this for far too long and I could give a laundry list of reasons why that was so. I didn't have a computer. I didn't have the proper inspiration. I felt as if my work meant nothing. While all that may be true, you the reader shouldn't have an endured a Bleeding Your Colors-less winter because of my deficiencies. So let us push forward because if you read the title of this article, I'm not here to talk about the past. Great, Staind and Mark McGwire in the opening paragraph of your return piece, way to draw 'em in.
So what does the future hold for this little blog of mine? My goal is to put out at least one article/post/random extemporaneous thought a day. With events such as MLB Opening Day, the NHL & NBA Playoffs, the NCAA Tournament, the Champions League quarterfinals, and the NFL Draft looming, one post minimum should be doable. Our baseball picks, and by our I mean myself and who will ever agree to have their prognostications thrown back in their face in three months, will be made within the next week. I will be doing bracket challenges for both the men's and women's tournaments on ESPN as well as firing up a Bleeding Your Colors fantasy baseball league with the Worldwide Leader. The football league went quite well in my humble opinion (Mr. DaSilva your marbles await you) so I am looking forward to see who returns for the much more arduous baseball season. Once the baseball season starts, I will also return to doing my daily Streaking In Public blurbs where you can watch along as I make the most feeble attempts humanly possible at getting rich quick through gambling.
With regards to the podcasts, they will be returning at the end of the month with a bit of a format change. Blading Your Colors, the wrestling podcast that has been heard even in Albania, won't see much of a change and will make it's triumphant return with a Wrestlemania preview. I'm sure Lou and Andrew have four months of pent up frustration with the 'E (keep pinning your #1 contender on free TV, H, way to go). As for the Bleeding Your Colors side, I feel towards the end we were trying to compile too much conversation into too short of time, leading to quite the disjointed end product. Therefore, going forward the sports podcasts will be split up for each general section of the blog as you can see from the top bar of the blog. Instead of "trying to get all our shit in", myself and a wide variety of guests (including Lou and Andrew naturally) can have focused discussions within one sport. Hopefully, that makes the pods shorter and more palatable for both us to make and for you to listen to.
The final project I have been cooking up, and am not quite sure if it is going the audio or written route just yet, is called Alternative Histories. I recently read a book (GASP!) with the same title in which the stories were written on the basis of one event in history happening differently. What if the USA didn't drop the atomic bomb on Japan? What if the South won the Civil War? I figured the same "What if?" storytelling could be brought to the worlds of professional sports and professional wrestling. What would the domino effect be if Mo Lewis never hit Drew Bledsoe? What if the ball never went through Buckner's legs? As to not just pick on New Englanders, how would the sports landscape have changed if David Stern instituted the age limit before the great high school influx of the 1990's? On the wrestling side of the coin, what if WCW ended up putting WWE out of business? What would the repercussions have been if Wrestlemania flopped? How would the wrestling hierarchy have fluctuated if the events of Over the Edge 1999 went smoothly instead of tragically? I think that this enterprise will be quite interesting as well as debate stirring.
Thank you all for your patience and continued support through this barren winter. I only hope that I can properly reward all of you for sticking with me even when I thought the dream was dead.
Image Credits: Lewis (reverbnation.com), McGwire (espn.com)