It’s hard to believe that another baseball season has come and gone. This is the saddest part of the whole year, knowing that baseball is gone for five months. (Four until Spring Training games.) Besides the success of the MLB season, we also had some great success at Top Of The Third. This year was my first full season blogging and it was challenging, some times frustrating, but a lot of fun being able to put out a blog post for 248 consecutive days (March 1st—November 4th) and a total of 248 posts.
The primary focus of 2016 was
the 40th Season of the Toronto Blue Jays but we also focused on the
1981 Montreal Expos, the 100th anniversary of the Chicago Cubs
playing at Wrigley Field, and we introduced a new segment (Recommended Reading)
where I gave my review on some baseball books.
It’s time for a break now, I’ll
relax a bit, watch some football, a little bit hockey, and start to prepare for
the 2017 season. Plans are already in the works for next season, and the focus
will turn to less history and more opinion-type posts.
But we won’t turn our back on
history completely. Baseball, more than any other sport, honours its history
and always remembers the great moments, players and games. Our “This Day In
Baseball History” segment will continue, but to a lesser scale, maybe two or
three posts per month. In July, we will devote one week to the All-Star Game
and another to the Hall of Fame like we did this year.
And while we won’t take the
whole season to focus on a team like we did with the Blue Jays this year, 2017
will focus on some milestone moments. For example, it will be the 50th
anniversary of the 1967 Boston Red Sox who took their fans along for the ride
in The Impossible Dream. It will mark 55 years since the second-year Los Angeles
Angels balked at the establishment and took on the New York Yankees in an
unforgettable chase for the American League pennant.
On April 15 of next year, it
will have been 70 years since Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier and
played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. But rather than look at only
Robinson, 2017 will see us focus on the importance that the Negro Leagues had
on baseball. Exactly how I will approach that hasn’t been decided yet, but it
is important that the stories from a league that defied MLB’s segregation be
told. I’m looking forward to learning them along with you.
So while we may be saddened by
the end of the 2016 season, we can always take comfort in the fact that winter
goes by quickly.
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