Not that you needed further evidence of genius, but while Derek Jacques' blog is rapidly becoming one of my first stops (write more!), it became, for a day, Joe Sheehan's stoop.

I have this long drawn out piece I'm working on called "Staring At Joe." It's my long drawn out answer to the questions I'm asked most often: how did you start? how can I do this? why are you such a lucky bastard? I'll let the first part leak a bit here.

I had no reason to be at the Winter Meetings. I'd finagled a media pass and headed down, not knowing what to do but confident that I could pass like I knew something. I got to Nashville and the obscenely large Opryland Hotel and immediately knew I was screwed. The first face I saw walking into the lobby was Tony Larussa.

Remember, this is before BP for me. I was just a guy that sent out emails and talked his way into a weekly radio gig. I finally found where the credentials were and prayed that I wouldn't get weak-kneed signing for them.

I had two goals for the trip - three if you count not making a fool of myself. The first was to meet Peter Gammons. I had hoped Rob Neyer would be in Nashville, but he wasn't, and it was Peter that gave me that first big link. My second goal was to meet Joe Sheehan. He was doing his newsletter and I was one of the many that plunked down money to read him.

As you know, pictures are pretty scarce on BP so I was lucky enough to have had Rob Miller point Joe out to me in a picture from the Arizona Fall League. Joe was in the background, but it was the best I had. A few hours into the first day, I thought I saw Joe. Joe will remember the pushy guy calling his name, asking if he was Joe Sheehan - the Joe Sheehan.

He probably won't remember me passing by him twice, circling first to make sure that he was who I thought he was, then a second time trying to get up the guts to talk to him. Joe stood on the edge of a large balcony outside the media room in Nashville, gesticulating wildly as he talked with a man I later met - Keith Law.

Joe won't remember the twenty minutes I debated in my head what to say and he probably didn't notice the guy staring at him across the room, like the wallflower at the prom looking at the Queen. (In a completely heterosexual way, of course.) When I finally took a deep breath and walked up to him, it was a decision I never realized I was making. In ten steps, I went from staring at Joe to following in his footsteps ...

.... but I need more work on that. More detail and an ending, details like that. Somewhere along the line, I realized, I stopped calling things "stories" as I did when my outlet was fiction. Now, as I typed it above, I see that I call them pieces. BP, ESPN, Slate, and even a book. I'm glad I talked to Joe.