Watchdog

Back in olden times - April of 2008 - I thought our editors had lost their minds when they decided to do live blogs for every Mets and Yankees game this season.

Then I saw that our venerable New England friends at Scott's Shots had run a live blog off the Boston Herald's apology for its Super Bowl weekend Spygate story.

Check back in 90 minutes. I am considering a live blog of my lunch. Teaser: there's some leftover whole wheat pasta in the fridge, I believe.

I don't know what to make of this Dan Le Batard essay in The Big Lead, which comes not long after his mid-life-crisis (temporary, perhaps) farewell to the Miami Herald.

It's interesting. It's well written. It's long.

It's more serious than I am able to take myself. And it's just another variation on a story that has been repeating itself since those crazy kids who climbed out of the primordial ooze had the old folks they left behind shaking their heads.

I'll continue trying to keep one foot in the ooze and one on the beach overlooking it. And I'll try not to write any essays as long or serious as Le Batard's.

I now am going to write a newspaper article. Thanks for reading today.

I was so caught up in WatchDog's first anniversary Friday that I neglected to extend birthday wishes to Fang's Bites, which was born on the very same day way back in May of 2007.

Mazel tov!

Your gift is in the mail.

It's a Buzz Bissinger mouse pad.

What more appropriate way could there be to wrap up another wild, wacky WatchDog week than this:

It's Buzz Bissinger himself, father of "Friday Night Lights" and crazy uncle of the blogosphere, telling NPR he regrets his behavior on "Costas Now," including his withering attack on witty wiseacre Will Leitch.

The link comes courtesy of . . . Deadspin, of course.

Enjoy the 1994 WPBA National 9-Ball Championship semifinals at 11 a.m. Sunday on ESPN Classic.

Will Leitch is a master at coming off as a highly reasonable and polite Midwesterner, as you can see in this clip from his book tour.

Unlike Buzz Bissinger, of course, who now is the President of the Cranky Old Media Guys Association.

I like Will. I don't know Buzz.

I hope I'm done with milking the "Costas Now" of April 29, 2008. But it was fun while it lasted.

This is a picture Charlie Chilkoot took of me this morning.

This is where it all happens. Usually. I blogged from a jury room a few weeks back.

That's a SportsChannel hat I'm wearing.

The picture on the wall is Jim Fassel talking to the beat writers during the Giants' preparations for Super Bowl XXXV. It was taken by Tom Franklin of the Bergen Record, who also took that famous picture of the flag being raised at Ground Zero.

The caricature was done when I was editor of The Rag at Northport High School in 1977-78.

On the left is the rear end of a hippo pegboard. I have a hippo collection.

I don't know exactly how the advertising on this blog works, but I do know I do not benefit in any direct way financially based on such ads or on page views or on anything here, really.

I'm actually a newspaper columnist in real life!

Regardless, if you enjoy reading the blog it wouldn't hurt to check out the ads and occasionally click on them to prove to advertisers that paying for Newsday.com exposure is as valuable as the print edition.

That way you can continue to enjoy reading Newsday for decades to come and I can afford to send my kids to college to keep my days free for blogging.

Thanks.

The big decision is at hand in the ongoing best logo contest being conducted by CNBC's Darren Rovell.

I'm going with the Wingnuts.

I just got released from jury duty after being bounced by a plaintiff's attorney for reasons he was not legally obligated to explain.

Back to regular blogging schedule Wednesday!

Oh, great, now Newsday.com's own bloggers are ganging up on me in an effort to knock me from my lofty perch as the king of all non-beat writer sports bloggers and put a stop to the endless flow of my obnoxious, self-congratulatory postings about page views and such.

Darn you, Rieber!

Canada is the darnedest, most diligent country we know.

Here is more evidence, in the form of a sports reporter's account of some sort of snow-related event.

SI's Richard Deitsch warned me earlier in the week he'd have something big for me (and my readers) Thursday.

Sure enough: Deitsch has scored a sports blogosphere coup, pulling back the curtain to reveal the wizard behind The Big Lead.

His name is Jason McIntyre, 31, and he lives in Brooklyn. That borough also is home to Deadspin editor Will Leitch, 32, meaning 50 years after losing the Dodgers, Brooklyn remains at the heart of the sports world.

Sort of. Anyway, congrats to Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Deitsch.

So, to sum up, what you are reading is a sports media post by a sports media blogger about a sports media reporter's scoop concerning a sports media blogger, who in August interviewed the first of the aforementioned sports media bloggers.

Is this a great country, or what?

(UPDATE: Now Leitch is reporting he goes to the same gym as McIntyre. Wow. About 12 years ago I was in the same gym as Marvin (The Human Eraser) Webster. Neither of us were bloggers at the time.)

Mark Cuban and the Dallas Morning News have been feuding this week about the Mavericks' new policy banning bloggers from their locker room - including a Morning News staffer.

I am too busy to follow this story closely, because I'm too busy blogging.

Here is the Morning News' account.

Here is Cuban's take.

Jim Dolan better not try this with me. I mean, if I ever actually decide to attend a Knicks game, of course.

Thursday I will be handing in my vintage laptop, which dates back to two Giants Super Bowls ago, for a less-old version.

But I now have to spend a few hours deleting as much stuff as I can from the old hard drive to ease the transition.

You're on your own for the rest of the morning, at least.

Enjoy "NFL Live" on ESPN2 at 7 p.m. My Cablevision schedule guide claims Sean Salisbury will be on. I don't think so.

I just got around to reading Sunday's Newsday and saw Jim Baumbach's item about WorldStadiums.com, which aims to list every major sports venue in New York (and elsewhere).

He said he has been to 21 of them. I counted 34 on my life list, but I'm much older than him. There no doubt are other Newsday sports staffers with more than me. If anyone out there can top 50, let me know.

That's Lynah Rink in Ithaca in the picture. I don't know whether that's on Jim's list. But it should be.

Ladies, gentlemen and WatchDog readers, we have a winner:

Congratulations to "Kurt" for posting the 10,000th comment in the eight-month history of the blog. Here it is, in response to a picture I posted featuring Jim Leyritz, Harold Reynolds and Gary Sheffield:

"Bravo, Neil. Though your blog post was a sad, sad statement on the excesses of the rich, I was actually more impressed with the picture you posted with it. I'm not sure where you got it from, but you managed to find (alleged) steroids, (alleged) sexual harassment, and (alleged) DUI manslaughter all in one place. Welcome to MLB ala the 21st century!"

Kurt's prize is blogosphere props, a signed Don Imus bobblehead or rice pudding for two with Scarlett Johansson in the Giants Stadium press lounge before the NFC Championship Game against the Redskins.

You can only choose one, though. And once I post this, you'll already have the first. So that's that.

Kurt's comment was more interesting than the first in WatchDog history, courtesy of "Your buddy" back on May 2.

He or she wrote this about the honor: "So, what do I get out of it?"

One more thing: As of 9:30 a.m. Friday, there had been 9,949 comments in WatchDog's eight-month history.

The person who posts comment No. 10,000 will go down in WatchDog history with "Your buddy," who was the first commenter, and whomever was No. 1,000, when I wasn't paying attention.

Good luck. The reward is blogosphere props, as there is no budget for prizes.

Thanks as always, WatchDog readers, for another month of impressive page views in December, despite the fact the last couple of weeks mostly were a lost cause for bloggers, who rely on people actually going to the office so they can goof off there.

The total was down only slightly from November, and the last three months of the year all blew away the blog's first five months. In December, WatchDog was surpassed only by the Yankees among sports blogs and finished fourth among all Newsday blogs.

The only sports blogger to set an all-time monthly high in December was our old pal Bob Glauber, who is dangerously narrowing the gap with WatchDog after trailing by a factor of 4 to 1 as recently as October.

Scary.

Overall, Newsday blog traffic was up about 400 percent from 2006 to '07.

Yes, I will be working/blogging over the next 11 days. It's an old habit from my football writer days, when we always seemed to be the only people on the staff not to take off the week after Christmas.

No, I will not be blogging as regularly as I normally do, because realistically readership falls drastically when people are not at work, and thus not goofing off at work.

For those of you who will be gone until Jan. 2, thanks for reading and Happy New Year.

For the rest of you . . . I'll be back Sunday with my thoughts on the 1994 Greater Detroit PBA Open. It's on at noon Saturday on ESPN Classic. Enjoy.

By the way, congratulations to our friends at The Big Lead for their record-breaking 15 posts Wednesday.

Nice job!

You're now halfway to the WatchDog record, set Sept. 10.

I have to get back to my newspaper column now.

I promise to go out out in a blogging blaze of glory Friday before many of you disappear until Jan. 2, because as everyone knows, God created blogs only as a reason for people to goof off at work.

Including me.

Sorry I'm off to such a slow start this Thursday. I was out of the house at 5:30 a.m. to take care of some business related to the Job for Which I Get Paid.

So any blogging today will have to come later this afternoon. But I did want to update loyal WatchDog readers on the first-round results of the Best Sports Blog of 2007 Tournament at Busted Coverage.

WatchDog, the No. 16 seed in the Midwest Region, went down to defeat, 1,323-572, against top-seeded Deadspin. The interesting thing is that our percentage of the vote rose from about 24 to 30 on the final day, indicating a wave of late support from the blog-reading public.

Not bad for a regionally-oriented blog with limits on how far it can go in using naughty words and naughty pictures.

At least one of the 572 votes came from an interesting source: Deadspin editor Will Leitch e-mailed that he chose WatchDog! I think he was serious. If not, I'm going to pretend he was.

It's been a strange day, what with the conflicting reports on Bill Parcells - welcome to the crowded club of team execs who have been tortured by this guy, Mr. Blank! - and a few more e-mails from a Playboy Playmate (see below).

By far the blogosphere highlight of the day, though, is the newly detailed blogging regulations issued by the NCAA.

Props to Scott's Shots for finding this.

If this is a hoax, I apologize. If it isn't, I'm scared that these people have responsibility for many of our nation's best and brightest young adults.

(Update: Mr. Scott wrote to assure me it's not a hoax. I mostly was kidding about that because it seemed too difficult to believe.)

Sports Business Journal has a story this week reporting that Turner Sports was happy with the popularity of its inaugural "TBS Hot Corner'' broadband service.

It logged more than 1 million live video streams during TBS's playoff coverage.

More than half the on-demand views were for features involving actress Alyssa Milano, topped by her tour of the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

Shocking!

Here is a story from Eric Fisher of Sports Business Daily/Journal about the latest setback for Major League Baseball in its effort to control what appears on independent sites catering to fantasy sports fans:

CDM Fantasy Sports today gained another legal victory over the MLBPA and MLBAM when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed an August '06 summary judgment in Missouri allowing the commercial use of MLB player names and statistics for fantasy games without a license. In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled, "The facts in this case barely, if at all, implicate the interests that states typically intend to vindicate by providing rights of publicity to individuals . . . We hold that [CDM's] first amendment rights in offering its fantasy baseball products supersede the players' rights of publicity."

"We're obviously thrilled. Our client is happy, but more than that, an entire industry is celebrating," said Rudy Telscher, an attorney representing CDM.

Holy cow.

As of 7:53 a.m. Thursday, we already were up to 162 comments on the latest Suzyn Waldman article from the newspaper.

Suzyn's ability to generate opinion and passion is unmatched - at least on my beat. (Well, OK, maybe Imus is in that category, too.)

So far the anti-Suzyn comments outnumber the supportive ones, but there are plenty of the latter.

Keep the comments coming everyone, at least those among you who have the respect for the process, for Suzyn and for fellow readers to keep it clean and reasoned rather than sexist and stupid.

I had a nice chat before Sunday night's game with TBS play-by-play man Chip Caray.

Neither one of us brought up my negative review of the TBS crew in the Sunday newspaper.

Not sure why. Maybe he was being polite. That would be better than if he didn't read it at all. Hmm. Then again, maybe he was appreciative, since a number of readers thought I was way too easy on him.

Whatever. I can't write what Chip and I talked about here, because I have to have some material in the bank for later in the week if the Yanks keeping winning.

The happy TBS news is that SNY's own Ron Darling, who has worked the Cubs-Diamondbacks series, will shift to the studio Monday night to rescue what has been a struggling operation.

The whole point of this blogging thing is to engage you, the reader. Here is your chance.

I have an interview scheduled for this morning with Alyssa Milano of "TBS Hot Corner,'' the new broadband service on MLB.com that will offer special playoff content.

If you have any questions for her, post them in the comments section and I'll try to get them in. (Keep it clean. I have the power to delete naughty stuff.)

The September blog traffic numbers are out, and my page views were up 26 percent from August and set a new monthly record - narrowly surpassing the July numbers.

Interpreting the figures is difficult, as I was off for the final 14 days of August and the first nine days of September, but it's clear that WatchDog Nation is growing by the day, and I sincerely appreciate every page viewer out there.

It's not for me to say exactly how my August numbers compared to those of Bob Glauber's NFL blog. But let's all have some mercy on the guy. Here's a link. Please help get him off to a respectable October start. He's a good friend and he does a good job for a blogger born when the Dodgers still played in Brooklyn.