Like seemingly everyone else for a book that no "normal" people know about, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver . Good so far and it raises interesting questions about many things, but one that struck me so far is the nature of fame.

Since UTK started a couple years ago, friends and acquaintances have often joked with me that Im 'famous.' That's a joke and I realized that even with my ample ego, I'm not sure fame is something I want. I remember watching Peter Gammons walking through the hotel at the Winter Meetings last year; every third step, someone would greet him and he'd be very polite. I felt almost bad walking up to him, but he was nothing but gracious. Now, I go to a Pizza Feed and I am treated like, as one attendee said, "the only girl at a military school dance." People want to talk to me, know what I think, and they buy me beers.

But if I go to the SuperTarget, no one knows me. In my small universe, everyone knows me, but it's a relatively very small universe. Other BP writers are like that and some bloggers are becoming like that - the centers of a small universe. I remember when I found Alex Belth's site - I was searching for info on something I had been told and a quick Google led me there. Good site, I read the info, I kept reading, and still do. Why? He's funny and an extremely good writer with a singular take on baseball that is not only uniquely New York, but uniquely Alex. This is no slam on Alex, but I don't think I've ever read something on his site that I couldn't have learned somewhere else, outside of his phenomenal interviews. So why do I (and likely you) read it? He makes us laugh, think, and question ourselves. The best blogs - and there aren't many - are places we come to trust and end up as something akin to addiction.

People questioned the Pete Rose story as publicity-seeking and worse, but few realized what a risk BP took running it. BP is the most trusted site regarding baseball that I'm aware of and if we were wrong, some of that credibility would be eroded. Blogs are the same - some go bad, some just vanish, and few stay strong. In baseball and the rest of the blog-world, I'm curious where they're going. Will they overtake media in some way, or will there be something of a co-opt where traditional media gets more immediate or hires away the best bloggers? Wish I knew. Heck, I'm not even very good at winning "Will It Float?" so I don't try to predict things.

I'm just riding the wave.

Time for the Yanks-Sox game. I'm settling in for a great day of baseball.