Happy (belated) birthday, LSB!!!

Happy belated birthday to Lone Star Ball — this humble blog turned 15 last Monday, having started on April 13, 2005.

I overlooked this last week because of...well, you know...all this (gestures at the world).

This isn’t how I thought we’d be marking the fifteenth year of Lone Star Ball. Honestly, back when Lone Star Ball began, I didn’t imagine I’d still be doing this fifteen years later...that just seemed too weird and speculative.

For those who aren’t aware of the history, I was recruited to bring my half-ass Blogspot Rangers blog to what was then called SportsBlogNation by Jeff Sullivan. Jeff was one of the “Original Six” bloggers, back when it kicked off with a handful of baseball blogs joining Athletic’s Nation, the original test case, under the SBN umbrella. Lone Star Ball was either the eighth or ninth blog launched, so while we weren’t a “founding” blog, we were one of the very first ones created.

SBN, of course, turned into Vox Media, which is now an online media empire that reached Unicorn startup status a few years ago. What started as a way for baseball fans to have a platform to write about their favorite teams has grown into something mammoth, with the team blogs just a small twig on the Vox Media tree.

I appreciate everyone who comes around here, whether you were here from Day One or just discovered us last week. And in particular I want to give a big thank you to Fittz, aka goET, who stepped in to help me run things a decade ago, and has been a huge part of this site’s success. I wouldn’t still be running LSB without him, and he deserves a big thank you from everyone here.