The Fat Lady Sings - Mourning in America

The last time I saw him, Scott Greenfield hinted that he was getting tired of it.

And now, it seems he's hung up his spikes.

Retired from the game.

Said farewell.

For five years he's been out there setting the pace (and it's a killing pace he set, hitting in more consecutive games than Dimaggio, playing more consecutive ones than Cal Ripkin, pitching more complete ones than Cy Young.

And he did it without steroids.

4744 posts.  That's an average of more than two and a half a day.  Every day.  The vast majority of them winners. 

When it's published, this will be number 810 for me in something over two and a half years.  I have some idea of what it's like to do what he's done, but really, it's pretty much beyond comprehension.

And so, he says it's time.

Recently, it's struck me that some of the new blawgers have written posts that mirrored things I had written years earlier. They wrote good posts, and they did so without any clue that anyone had discussed the same issues before them. It dawned on me that I've gone through another circle, as happens when we get older. Every year, maybe day, new people come into the blawgosphere and it's a rebirth, where everything old is new again. As this thought occurred to me, I realized that my work is now part of the old, forgotten blawgosphere. This is probably how it should be.

Like him or not (and I like him), praise him or vilify him (and I praise him) the blawgosphere has lost, it seems, a major voice.

He kept us honest.  He made us think.  He entertained.

Mostly he cared and made that clear.

And now we're on our own.

He hung up his gunbelt, rode off into the sunset.

Come back, Shane.