The Baltimore Wire: One Year Anniversary Today

Sep 5, 2013; Baltimore, MD, USA; NFL Kickoff stage glowing purple at the Inner Harbor. Mandatory Credit: Paul Frederiksen-USA TODAY Sports

This FanSided Network sports blog called The Baltimore Wire celebrates today the completion of one year of Charm City and Free State sports coverage.

Those of us who are parents are proud of our children, and we celebrate their accomplishments by putting pictures on social media and bragging about how awesome our kids are. So that is what I am doing here, as The Baltimore Wire is one of my kids … my baby.

And like an infant, in order to grow, it needs to be feed. Oh my, does it need feeding!  A year later, I see I have written 535 articles personally, and all together our staff has churned out over 1200.

We have sought to especially cover the Ravens and Orioles, while also having a lot on the Terps, other regional colleges, and even coverage of Maryland high school sports – especially the Maryland State Public School Championships.

Looking back to this day a year ago, I see that I posted a number of articles that I had collected for the day of launch – particularly on the Ravens. Though it was a Wednesday, I was looking back at the previous and most recent 20-17 victory over the Bengals, noting that the win salvaged the Ravens’ season at that point. The statistics in that game did not favor the Ravens, but the defense was the best unit on the field that day, and in the end Baltimore had a three-point victory.

An Orioles article on the launch date a year ago talked about offseason priorities. The annual GM meetings (that are going on right now) had just completed, and we were reflecting on some Duquette remarks. Of course, this was far in advance of the Ubaldo Jimenez and Nelson Cruz signings. At this point it was difficult to see the Orioles doing much of anything in terms of adding players.

Duquette was talking about how he expected some conversations to result in some action in the next week or two … which of course did not actually happen.

DD also spoke about how teams were interested in both J.J. Hardy and Matt Wieters.

As illustrative on how certain themes are annually repeating problems and challenges, I wrote a year ago today:

It would seem to stand to reason that the Orioles are not going to be able, in the long run, to both afford the costs of free agent additions while also paying and keeping the quality core players who have been developed and/or flourished here. Chris Davis is going to need to be paid more and more. The same will be true of another Chris – Mr. Tillman. And then there is the issue of Matt Wieters – whether to hope to extend him after his coming two final years, or trade him now.

If it was true a year ago that it looked nearly impossible to afford to pay arbitration-eligible players while simultaneously securing free agents, how much more true is it now, 99 wins later?

The sports landscape is always changing. Just 365 days ago, who would have thought that we would be talking about Nelson Cruz with the Baltimore Orioles, or looking at how Steve Smith Jr. and Justin Forsett would have the Ravens offense moving again?

But this is what makes it all interesting and compelling. It is why we read, speculate, and write our thoughts … in order to read and speculate and write more.

So, it has been a fun year, even if it is so often difficult to understand at times why certain articles have relatively few viewers, whereas others draw in thousands of viewers.

But we all thank the thousands of you who have taken time to read about our views from “the fans’ side” about our favorite local teams here in the land of pleasant living. And please stick with us at The Baltimore Wire as we build and grow for the future.