Bloggy goodness

I'm perpetually amazed by the sites that refer people to Honest Wagner. This morning I discovered BlogPulse, which searches about a million blogs and has a bunch of clever software programs that map the spread of ideas and the relationship between sites.

Curious, I put "Jason Kendall" into their "key people" search and discovered that, last month, Kendall was rumored to be a trade target with more than half of the clubs. Trade rumors have no shelf life so I can't be bothered to read them now. Far more interesting are the many descriptions from (what appear to be) young bloggers describing their experience at the ballpark and/or their feelings about the players. I could be wrong, but from my limited sampling of the search results, it appears that the boy bloggers write about trade rumors and stats while the girl bloggers focus more on the players.

Here's some of the good stuff. Holly writes:

Nothing really exciting lately. Saturday Kristi, Leslie and I went to the Pirate game. It was really fun. The Pirates won 4-2! Wooo! My new boyfriend on the Pirates is Jose Castillo!! He came over gave me a signed baseball. Cool stuff!!! After the game was fun waiting for the players to come out. I nearly made Jason Kendall go deaf. Good thing his windows were almost the whole way up.

Erin-go-blog writes this, in a list of 100 things about herself:

85. When I was in high school, I had a huge crush on Barry Bonds. This was before he got all puffy and freakish. My new(er) Pirates crush is Jason Kendall.

Very cool, Erin. LadyPredator writes this:

I think I'm developing my first crush on a baseball player ever. Gah - I don't even like baseball that much - it's good to watch on a Sunday afternoon in the summer but it's just not that exciting. BUT - Pirates Catcher Jason Kendall is delicious. *mauls him* Too bad they're probably going to trade Kris Benson - those two would make a great fic couple. Then again, trades have never stopped any fic writer before. Hmmm.

I'm going to don't ask, don't tell about the definition of "fic couple."

Finally, BabyDuckie offers this gem of autobiographical writing:

Hey! Well tonight was absolutely GREAT! Dad picked me up around 4:30, and we got there around 5:30. We walked the riverwalk to see the big fountain, haha. Then we went to the Pirate Store, and he bought me the Jason Kendall On Deck Magazine :). And i showed him the charm i want for my birthday and the Kevin Young broken game used bat, lol. Then we went to our seats. Great seats. We were in the Grandstand, front row, 1st base line. When they were announcing the line-ups they said Jack and i screamed real loud. Jack turned around and looked!!! hehe. Oh yeah and when we were going to our seats Dad told me to ignore the usher so we didn't have to pay him. So i went to our seats and the guy went hey how are you guys doing and my Dad goes no and keeps walking! LMAO, it was hilarious, he's so mean. Then in the 3rd inning, they had the hot dog toss where they shot hot dogs from these guns. And they shot one to us!!! It was sooo awesome, i never thought i'd catch a hot dog!! Haha, me and Dad tried to open it but it was all taped up. So we decided to take it home and give it to Craig cause we knew he'd be mad that he missed it! Haha. Then Ashley came to sit with us cause she had her free tickets, too! And we started to cheer loud for everyone! It was soo fun. Then in the 7th inning, Rob Mackowiak got a grand slam off of errors. It was absolutely amazing! But then Randall Simon got out on a hit to the gap, he is so slow! I was screaming @ him. Kendall hit a homer, too! We won, 8-4 :), we're gonna be in 5th place now! YES! Anyways, me and Dad hadda walk back to the garage that we parked in downtown, and he brought me home. Now i'm gonna go watch the highlights and make sure Milwaukee loses!! Haha, so ttyl<3

The good people in marketing better get on this thing. Here is your huge and candid and free focus group. I've just grazed and I have two recommendations: (a) Don't trade Jason Kendall, and (b) Jason Kendall swimsuit calendar promotion.

P.S. All hail these ladies! Should they ever read this page, I hope they'll forgive me.