St Peterburg Times, going for the Pulitzer!

St Petersburg Times outs Manny Stiles

No, Manny Stiles is not announcing that he is gay (despite the obvious, overt clues to some, including his wife). St Pete Times beat writer/journalism wunderkind Marc Topkin tells the world that Manny Stiles' real name is "Erik Kombol". He forgot to mention "and hardest working lazy ass in the charity baseball blogger/shameless self-promotion business", but "oh well".

An aside to Topkin's article- a segue I call "Also..."

Also...

I met John Vukovich a few times when I lived in PA and he still holds the record for telling me the 1st, 2nd and fourth funniest jokes I've ever heard. A great guy, a baseball lifer and every time I think of him, I'll be smiling through sadness. Another example of there being waaay too many serious moments in life.

It seems I'm going to be a big Joe Maddon fan. I like his attitude and hardheaded unwillingness to accept negativity. That's a start in the "What do we have in common" category. Why waste energy on negativity when it's so much easier to do nothing and be positive?

Articles to come on "the guy with a disdain for meaningless history"/manager.

Devil Rays Week in Replay

Congrats on surviving a wild first week of Manny Stiles "#2 Devil Rays Fan"

- The Devil Rays have lost every game since I officially came on board. I think it's a good sign of things to come. Get the losses out of the way early. During the regular season, I will add links for box scores, etc. Let me get moved in and decorated first!

- There really hasn't been much bad press about this whole arrangement. I don't care personally what people say about me, but I do like to use it as material for writing. I was anticipating a backlash, jealousy, a-holes calling me out unneccessarily. I was prepared for battle and instead everyone kinda went "meh..."

I can't wait to see the imitators for college football (will blog for tuition) and NFL (will blog for beer) season.

-Other than Dan Shanoff calling Matt Silverman his favorite executive, slobbering over Matt's insightfulness and praising Matt for such genius, then wagging his finger at me and warning me that I owe Matt "the best freaking blog ever"; it's been a feel good deal.

Hey, Mr. Shanoff, the auction winner was already going to get a "Freeking Awesome Blog" anyway - my flavor of 'freek' has 2 times the awesome power of 'e' and none of the inconsequential, apathesthesia and space constraining 'a' of ordinary freaks.

In other words... "duh"

- With Matt Silverman winning the bid. (let's focus here - Matt won, he paid the charity, it's his donation, in his name, not the Club's technically) it really just makes it easier on himself. Basically I was going to blog on behalf of the winning fan's fanship. Dive into their allegiance, study their emotional connection, etc. I think it's fairly easy to dissect Matt's fanship. His perspective is (sorry, regular fans) 694% more interesting than a regular fans. How he does his job depends on it.

Also, If any other Devil Rays fan would have won and made me cover the Devil Rays, I would have HAD to pester him at some point. This way, I can get in touch with him real easily. (even though I'm still going to be pestering him, it's what I do - pester people)

See? The man IS a genius! He even outsmarted me!

The whole story of how it happened will be posted soon enough.

- Don't fret. I'm here ALL season! Even if the times gets tough, despite my superstitions... even if they NEVER win a game, I will be here (actually, if they lose ALL of them, that would be a fantastic feat for "The curse of Manny Stiles" to brag about.)

-Don't assume you know how this season will go. Forget about what was and what never was and what "should have been". Focus on now until what's next gets here. The only thing you can do about the past is change your attitude towards it.

- It's so hard to pick a favorite Devil Ray (every fan has a favorite player, right?). I am a fan of all of them! Carl Crawford is THE most exciting single player in baseball. Scott Kazmir is the Ace. There are TONS of guys on this team to idolize for all kinds of reasons. But this year, Delmon Young is my boy. Tell me one bad thing about him without using the word "bat" and convince me otherwise. Manny's got Delmon's back.

All the other Devil Rays that people got beef with, (BJ Upton, Elijah Dukes, the bullpen) Manny is your fan too! I won't put up with people talking bad about my team. Especially when they don't know what they're talking about... (there's 3 sides to every coin - heads, tails, edge)

-Expect the unexpected and be disappointed otherwise. If you can't be good, at least be safe!

If you're not having fun, what are you having? There's already too many serious moments in life.