The Pinstriped Bible is Looking for a Few Good Men and Women

Where you goin' with your shoes undone
Throwin' rocks, makin' a fun of everyone
Little man, you make a big mistake
Unless you change your way
-Randy Newman, "Change Your Way"

The Pinstriped Bible is looking for a few good men and women. I've had reason to think quite a bit about baseball coverage on the web for a good 15 years now, and I've been revisiting the subject with special intensity lately for reasons that I hope will become clear elsewhere a few months from now (keep your fingers crossed). I have to confess that having surveyed the vast forest of zeroes and ones that is baseball commentary on the Internet, I am bored. James Shields is traded for Wil Myers, 10,000 fingers strike 100,000 keys, and opinions take flight like so many bloated geese halfway to being pâté from the moment of conception, all weighed down by the same sabermetric-orthodox approach that we all have imbibed practically from birth by now -- like BPA.

The quality of execution might vary, but the conclusions will be pretty damned close because we're proceeding from the same precepts. There is plenty of it out there, thanks, and the beach doesn't need more sand, as we've got more than we can usefully dispose of in a thousand lifetimes.

I started the Pinstriped Bible as more of a column than a blog back in the 1990s, when just having a weekly or daily presence on the web was sufficient, a novelty in itself. I went on like that for a long time. More recently, I sought the help of good friends and colleagues such as Jay Jaffe and Cliff Corcoran (the latter of whom I am fortunate enough to still work with as a Designated Columnist). Finally, I came here, where I was lucky enough to inherit a talented group of young writers such as Andrew Mearns and Tanya Bondurant. After so many years as a sole proprietor, it is of great comfort to be part of a team. But, having said that ...

... It's not enough. It's time to grow again.

The Pinstriped Bible and I are looking for some new writers, new voices for the site. It's an opportunity to write about your favorite team, or baseball in general, in what I hope is a stress-free environment where you can hone your craft and have some fun in the process. I cannot pay you, not now, but I hope to repay you tenfold in opportunity in the short term, and in the long term, well, anything can happen.

Samples can be sent to me here. A few notes:

• The minimum starting point for any piece of publishable writing is that it be clean, accurate, and on time. If you can't be a reliable part of a rotation, if you can't be troubled to make sure you spelled "Jeter" correctly, this probably isn't the field for you. A veneer of professionalism isn't everything, but it's a necessary and unavoidable beginning.
  
  
• I don't sweat length; a story should be exactly as long as it needs to be to do what it's trying to do. That said, economy of expression is important and this probably isn't the time to wheel out your version of Moby Dick with Joe Girardi as Captain Ahab ... although that might be fun to read once we know each other better.
  

One last qualification, more important than any other: I am looking for something new. As I said at the outset, the same old analysis is a commodity product. I would be happy to publish a few more voices in that line, but more than anything else, I am looking for something new. If you don't want to write the kinds of things that Rob Neyer and Baseball Prospectus have been doing for 100 years, that I have been doing for 100 years, I want to hear from you as much or more than I do those who want to write what used to be the rebellious thing but is now commonplace and conformist. You want to do videos, a comic strip, Brian Cashman as the star of a Wagnerian opera, stories that talk about more than WAR and wOBA, I want to know you and I want to publish you.

A new season is coming. Pitchers and catchers report in just over 60 days. In a lot of ways it's going to be a very different season for the Yankees. I want it to be a different season for the Pinstriped Bible as well. I hope you will be part of it. I look forward to hearing from you.