I went to college at Southern Oregon University, about six hours from where I grew up. My relationship with the Giants moved from "childhood curiosity" to "unhealthy obsession" as soon as I moved away from the Bay Area. There is a kind of rock star romance in my blaming my lack of a college degree on a crazy amount of partying. Waking up in a T.G.I. Friday's dumpster with my shirt on my legs and my pants on my head, and all that. While that didn't help, it was more likely the combination of the instant information offered by the newfangled "internet", and the love for baseball that did me in.
The initial foray into the online world taught me that most internet discussions were useless. Name calling and being idiotic for the sake of a response were almost required. The arbitrary world of sports fandom just magnified the idiocy. Then, however, I stumbled on the newsgroup alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants. It was a place to find intelligent people having intelligent conversation about the Giants. There was an occasional potty joke thrown in. I was sold.
The chief participant in the group was Gregg Pearlman, and he collected a lot of the best discourse of the group at EEEEEE!. He was nice enough to make you sick, as was most of the group. Without that newsgroup, I wouldn't have a website today. Specifically, without Gregg and his site, there would be no McCovey Chronicles. In his weekly pieces, Gregg would occasionally quote my newsgroup postings. After the 2000, 2001, and 2002 seasons, I was honored to write essays for EEEEEE! that looked back at the preceding year. Without the confidence and practice his site afforded me, there is no way I would have started Waiting for Boof.
Not to imply that the world was this close to losing something that is this century's Sistine Chapel, but if you enjoy any facet of this site, the thanks should first go in the direction of EEEEEE!. This is all bubbling forth now because Gregg is back in the Giants blogging world with Almost EEEEEE!. Visit once, visit often, as he is a fantastic writer, and is nutsier about the Giants than almost any of us. His son? Uribe Pearlman. Even though that is not true, I rest my case.