All About the Crank New for the 2001 Season

Who is the Baseball Crank? The Baseball Crank is the nom de plume (and registered service mark [SM]) of Matt Wall, a freelance baseball writer, sometime software drone, ballpark bagger, and sufferer from Wade Boggs' disease (that tragic syndrome that causes ballplayers to refer to themselves in the third person). The Baseball Crank is also the free website of The Baseball Crank, the person/writer, which is probably where you are reading this. If this is confusing to you, consider how many albums you own which are named after the band that recorded them. What exactly is a crank? A Crank, in short, was the common term of the 19th century for a person who followed baseball as he or she breathed air. No doubt Nellie Kelly was a crank. Paul Dickson cites the New York World of May 23, 1889 in his Baseball Dictionary: "The arrival of Father Adrian Clapdoodle Anson and his lavendar conspirators in the metropolis is always a signal for a general uprising of the cranks..." I, the latter-day Crank, aspire to three things: to attempt, feeble though my efforts might be, to write about baseball in that lovely and evocative way that writers once did, as evidenced in the citation above; to be Cranky about the game we love, in the best ways possible -- fiercely defensive of its core beauties in the face of the assaults of modern life, enthusiastic about embracing its evolution, loquacious and where possible eloquent in reportage about the realities of Baseball, and entertaining -- it is a game, last I checked; to foster a revival of the singing of the song "Tessie" by the Latter-Day Royal Rooters of the Red Sox Astute readers may also note that I am oh so occasionally cranky in the more modern sense of the work. How can I support the Baseball Crank? ...you may ask yourself. Or at least I hope you ask yourself that, every morning (please see Dogbert's New Ruling Class or the Al Franken Decade for models). If you like what you read, you'll like the rest of The Diamond Angle website -- read it. The Crank asks that you consider supporting the print edition of The Diamond Angle by purchasing a subscription to this most excellent journal, a bargain at $20 a year. See The Diamond Angle front page for details. The Crank gets absolutely no money from this -- but the publication deserves your readership and support! If you would like to get the Crank some actual Cash...consider... Re-Printing/Re-Using the Crank's Gorgeous Prose, Commissioning Him to Write More of it For You, and Otherwise Attempting to Put Food in His Mouth ...all of which are strongly encouraged. Contact me at crank@thediamondangle.com to find out more, to ask for reprint permissions, and so forth.

The Crank's Lineup TODAY'S BASEBALL CRANK The above link will take you to today's edition of The Baseball Crank. The Baseball Crank is updated several times a week during the baseball season. There are "issues" of the Baseball Crank with one or more new articles each issue. The Baseball Crank is happy to join the spanking-new version of the online edition of The Diamond Angle, one of the best baseball magazines around. Selected columns from The Baseball Crank appear in TDA and other baseball publications. CONTACT THE CRANK if you dare Send me email at: crank@thediamondangle.com To comment, praise, interact, communicate, or julienne fry. EMAIL UPDATES OF NEW ISSUES! KYEWL!! If you'd like to receive a short (1-3 paragraph) notification via email when there are new articles or issues on The Baseball Crank (1-3 times a week during the North American baseball season, 1-3 times a month during the Hot Stove League season), please send email to crank@thediamondangle.com with some kind of indication in the subject line or early in the message indicating that you want to be added to the mailing list. The Baseball Crank hates spam, and won't re-sell, reveal, or otherwise make your life miserable through misuse of your email address. I guarantee you the email list technology I use will keep your email address 100% private. I may, however, very very occasionally send you with the notification a short plug for himself or a friend. THE ARCHIVES The Archives has most articles from the Baseball Crank column of The Diamond Angle On-line and Print Editions, a few miscellaneous other things written by the Crank from time to time, and perhaps a few extra things of passing interest. At some point, we'll add in the usual LINKS PAGE, too.

The Baseball Crank may be contacted at crank@thediamondangle.com. (c) 2001 Matthew Wall/The Baseball Crank.