Ducksnorts is done

Once upon a time, when jbox and I were first considering starting a Padres blog, we took a look around at all the Padres blogs that were around in 2005 and there were three. Two of them hadn't been updated in over a year and there was Ducksnorts. 

The conversation we then had was this:

"I don't think we know as much about baseball as Ducksnorts."

"Yeah, we'll just have to talk about the Padres from our own perspective."

"That's a real messed up perspective."

"Who cares? It's a Blogspot blog. Nobody will read it anyway."

And Geoff at Ducksnorts, being on it as well as he is, welcomed our new little blog that spoke very randomly about my wife's cousin happening to see Khalil Greene in a restaurant. That was the extent of the analysis. Khalil Greene eats at restaurants.

So we did that for a while.

And not long after we verified that we had about eleven daily readers (a number which remains consistent today), SB Nation contacted us and asked if we'd like to be a member of the network. At the time, there were only a handful of blogs on the network. Athletics Nation, McCovey Chronicles, Bleed Cubbie Blue... Maybe a few others. Not more than ten. 

Our first call, after talking to Blez, was to call Ducksnorts. How legit could this network of bloggers be if they're asking us to join the network before asking Ducksnorts? And sure enough, after talking to Geoff, we found that they had actually contacted him first and that we were seconds. Later we found out that they had contacted at least one other blogger who started same time as us.

And ever since then, Ducksnorts and Gaslamp Ball lived a happy existence. We knew we weren't ever going to do as much heavy analysis, or maybe be as good of writers, or even possibly pay attention to the games as well as Ducksnorts, but that was OK. Because people who wanted Ducksnorts had Ducksnorts and the other eleven people had us.

JBox and I got to hang out with Geoff a few times over the last five or six years and having read each others blogs in that time (I only assume Geoff read us), hanging out was always great because it was like just hanging out with somebody you knew from high school who grew up and changed, but never changed so much that you couldn't count on talking baseball and Padres and perhaps HTML programming, depending.

And then other blogs came and went and other blogs came and stayed. (boo cake)

And now Ducksnorts has come to the end of its run in the same year that REM and the White Stripes called it quits. And Gaslamp Ball still hasn't been around as long as Ducksnorts was around for when we first started our blog. And yet we are old. Old and trying to be young, like an obscure blogging version of Blink-182, which made their kinda awkward comeback this year also.

Next season will be weird without Ducksnorts. Our eleven regulars might not notice, but I don't know what the rest of you are gonna do. Good luck with that and thanks for everything, Geoff.