You probably didn’t know it, but February 21, 2013 marked the end of the second full year of Off The Bench. We’re proud to report our continued growth, and proud to reaffirm our commitment to bringing our loyal readers genuinely new, different, honest, and interesting takes on the baseball world.
As we’re sure you’ve noticed, our site has gotten a little facelift lately (in what has seemingly become our annual tradition). We really like our new look and, while there are still some bugs to be worked out, we think it makes us look a little bit more professional and allows us to promote some of our older, but still relevant content in addition to our exciting and cutting edge new stuff. The new look enables us to tailor specific content to the main slide show as well as the featured and latest posts sections, and posts are now categorized by team and league for your navigating pleasure. We feel that the layout can go a long way toward continuing the growth that we have worked so hard to achieve.
Speaking of growth, we’d like to take a second to profusely thank a few of the people whose hard work has made the improvement of Off The Bench possible.
First, our intrepid editor Ari Glantz has been instrumental in taking our site to the next level. The back end of Off The Bench, which was once a bit of a hodge podge, now runs like clockwork under his editorial tutelage. We are indebted to Ari for all the help he gives us on this site and for allowing us to maintain our literary bona fides (you should see some of the stuff before he gets to it).
Next, we want to single out David Ringold, our tireless reporter from the West Coast. David balances weekly posts with a demanding schedule at the Seattle restaurant he is successfully starting from scratch. His posts have been statistical, insightful, funny, and nostalgic, and each brings Off The Bench valuable and popular content. We’re very grateful that David continues to churn out quality material and we love having him on board.
Sean and Max would also like to thank Vassar College, which generously allows us to earn credit for our hard work on the blog, and many members of the Vassar community and the Vassar Brewers baseball team for their support. We would also be remiss not to include Anh, our blogging guardian angel, in our thank yous.
Looking forward, 2013 promises to be a year of great upheaval in the Off The Bench universe. Both Sean and Max will be graduating this May and are headed off to (hopefully) fruitful careers in the Real World. Yes, that deserves capital letters. This summer, Sean is off to Germany to play and coach semi-professional baseball. We are sure that this will be an amazing experience for Sean and unique stress on the patriated members of the Off The Bench family.
We will, undoubtedly, persevere despite some serious geographical, social, economic reorganization. Stay tuned and follow us as we adapt to to all this; we’re sure it will be a bumpy road, but those are usually the most fun to drive.
As we look to a future of continued online growth and most importantly more great and (nearly) daily (mostly) baseball content, we want to specifically point out those who make Off The Bench the success that it is: our readers, our twitter followers, our commenters, our emailers. Thank you guys for caring about what we have to say.
It’s definitely been a fun trip, and after two years, we’re just getting started.
-Off The Bench
