We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time-T.S. Eliot
As another season draws to a close, so does another year of following the Padres at Ducksnorts. And while our favorite baseball team will return to fight again next year, I will not.
After 14 years of producing Ducksnorts, I no longer have the time or energy necessary to do so at a level of quality acceptable to me. The sacrifices and compromises one is willing to make in life at age 42 are different from those one is willing to make at age 28.
Ballplayers get old. Writers get old. Priorities change.
When Ducksnorts first launched in 1997, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris reigned as baseball’s home run kings, Derrek Lee still played for the Padres, and Anthony Rizzo was just entering the third grade. In some respects, it seems like a lifetime ago. Heck, I’ve never even lived in a place as long as I’ve written Ducksnorts.
The list of people I need to acknowledge for their support and guidance is prohibitively long, so we’ll just stick to generalities. Thanks to everyone who ever read, commented, or otherwise participated here at Ducksnorts; to everyone who bought my books; to the folks at Top Prospect Alert, Hardball Times, All-Baseball/MVN, b5media, Baseball Daily Digest, Baseball Prospectus, and ESPN for providing me with opportunities to reach a wider audience than I’d ever dreamed possible; to current and former members of the Padres front office, broadcast team, and other departments for their generosity of time and spirit; to local, national, and international broadcast and print media who have taken an interest in my work here; and to everyone who doesn’t fall into one of the aforementioned categories.
Thanks most of all to my wife of nearly 16 years for putting up with more of my nonsense than you’ll ever know. How and why she has done so lies quite beyond my comprehension, but I am grateful beyond words that she has.
To everyone reading this: It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve you as best I could over the years. If you need to find me for whatever reason, I’ll still be at Baseball Prospectus, Twitter, Petco Park, and various minor-league ballparks.
Thanks again for everything, and take care. Go Padres!
gy
Geoff,
Thanks so much for what you’ve provided for Padres and baseball fans over the past 14 years. I really believe that reading this site on a regular basis has made me a better baseball fan and a better writer. I’m currently writing for an Anaheim Ducks blog and I can see in the things that I write about and the way that I write them just how much I’ve been influenced by this site.
Your absence will definitely leave a void in Padres coverage on the blogosphere. Best of luck in everything you do from here on out. I can’t wait to see you again in Cooperstown in four years.
Thanks for everything,
Robby
Geoff,
I have only found Ducksnorts a couple of years ago as I was looking for Padre insights after I left the San Diego area. I have come to appreciate your writing style, humor, and dedication to baseball. Because of folk like yourself, I have not lost the connection to My Padres!
Thanks for your desire to take the chances needed to “put it out there”.
Best of luck in your future ventures.
“Ex Pat Padre Fan” Dean
Geoff,
Ducksnorts was one of the first baseball blogs I ever discovered. Up until that point I had been basically writing for myself, but after reading your stuff I realized there were other people doing the same thing – it opened my eyes to the whole concept of blogging and led me toward the discovery of the baseball blogging community. It enriched my love of baseball, gave purpose to all the time I was “wasting” caring about baseball as much as I did, and set me on a path that definitely improved my life.
You say “the sacrifices and compromises one is willing to make in life at age 42 are different from those one is willing to make at age 28,” and I couldn’t agree more. I’m impressed you made it this far at such a consistently high level – the baseball landscape is better for it.
Thanks for everything you wrote here, and for your passion and insight about the Padres specifically and baseball in general. See you around!
Christian
Geoff
Thanks for terrific Padres coverage. I will never forget “discovering” DS sometime in 2002 — and being excited to read something that was so insightful about the Pads.
The Game Threads were something that I enjoyed immensely, and bring me back to when I had the time and energy to participate in “real time” reaction to Pads games. I will always remember how much fun participating in the 2007 game 163 thread was (not for the final result, of course, we all know Holliday was out) but for the hundreds of comments — it was like being at the game with a bunch of old buddies. Sans the beer, of course — although I think I had a few.
I will miss the DS community and thoughtful discussion that occurred here.
Thanks a million and stay in touch.
Nick
Thanks for the years of great writing. When I moved to San Diego in 2001 Ducksnorts was instrumental in turning me into a Padres fan and I have no doubt you had a similar effect on others. The Padres fan base may be smaller and more laid back than most other teams but we’ve been incredibly fortunate to have you blogging about the team before blogs were even a thing. I’m sure we’ll read your writing in other venues but it won’t be quite the same. Ducksnorts will be missed.
Noooooooo NO!
This leaves a huge void. Though I have to appreciate the poetry of you leaving at the same time the Padres Broadcast team and radio teams are in the air. Its absolutely an end of an ERA. If you decide to keep a (free) presence on the internet elsewhere, please let us know on twitter.
As much as I have been critical of your sometimes depressing (if realistic) take on the team on Gaslampball and elsewhere. I dare say there is *no one* around with more detailed knowledge of Padres history than you Geoff. For lifelong fans of the Padres, such as my self, it always warms my heart to know that there is someone out there who can remind me so many of our random players.
Hate to see Ducksnorts go, but I think we all realize you are much bigger than the blog as your personable writing-style reminds us. Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into delivering thoughtful analysis for the hometown team. An additional thanks for going out on top rather than limping towards blog retirement (i.e. Michael Jordan and Andy Rooney).
One final question: where will we get our Padres news now? With all due respect to the other Padre blogs, nobody even seems to come close. Where will you keep up with the Padres?
Thanks Geoff, and best of luck!
Say it ain’t so!
This is a cold, sad day …
First, and foremost … THANK-YOU, GY! You make me want to be a better fan
We will *always* be Ducksnorters!
RJ asks the right question … where can/will we go?
Personally, I started paying for MadFriars a couple of years ago … and have found it to be worth the price … but it’s not a daily blog on the Padres … though this year they did a good job of (near) daily posts about the goings on down on the farm.
Or, we can see just how long GY keeps allowing comments here in this thread … I say we go down swinging
So … what’s your prediction for the 2012 Opening Day lineup?
GY you will be missed! As someone who has blogged off and on (more off) since ’07, I don’t know how you’ve lasted as long as you have. More importantly how you were able to churn out great article, after great article, on a daily basis especially when the Padres teams have been, well, not so great.
When I was doing links on my site I would go through each website and see if they had something new posted. Most of them, I’d just grab the link and throw it in the links column and never look back. When I got to Ducksnorts I’d always stop and read what you had to say.
The Avenger-In-Chief and myself were discussing a while back, how we knew if we wrote a great article….it was linked to on Ducksnorts.
With that said, I wish you luck for the future and I know I will surely bump into you sometime down the road.
The best single-team focused blog retires after a brilliant run. What a classy exit.
I’m going to miss your fine balance between analyst and fan (hard to achieve but you nail it), your voice and news I can respect about my own home team’s blood-rivals — the Mariners will never again be able to use your insights to scout their mortal enemies.
Best wishes to you — I’m confident you’ll ace whatever you take on next with the grace and utility of what you have achieved with Ducksnorts.
(With my head still firmly buried in the sand of denial …)
OT – This comment on a BP article about the drama of last night’s games jump’d out at me …
Three times in the last five seasons Adrian Gonzalez’s teams have lost the last game of the season to miss the playoffs – in two of those games his team had the lead in the final inning. They might have to start calling it the Curse of Adrian Gonzalez.
Does this mean that the Roberto Pettagini tribute banquet has to find a new sponsor? In the words of Bob Uecker, “Another Day, Another Dollar, 0-4, Drew the Collar”.
The next social sparkler at Pizza Port is on me….
You’ll be back.
Wow. Of all the necessary thank yous, the biggest one should be from us readers to you. Thank you for providing such an insanely consistent supply of quality brain candy. I have no idea how you did it. You are the gold standard of what a team’s blogger should be.
Thank you so much for all the years and the quality writings, Geoff.
Good luck.
@Ryan: he won’t. honestly.
@everybody: thanks for all the good discussions we had. this place will be missed.
…end transmission…
This was tough news. Ducksnorts had become a part of my daily ritual… Wake up, brush teeth, drin coffee, check ducksnorts.
This is leaves a big hole in my baseball life. As hard as this is to take, I must respect the decision.
Thanks for everything. This site will continue to be the measuring stick by which all other blogs are measured.
I salute your outstanding work over the last few years, thank you for providing a great source for Padres baseball and analysis
Geoff, Thanks for all the years writing about baseball. You are an outstanding writer and an inspiration to many of us who started blogging much later. Good luck with all your future endeavors.
Geoff,
Thanks for sharing with us these many years. I first came to Ducksnorts 8 years ago from the old Fanstop board. Your blog was the first Padres blog I discovered, and I immediately felt like I didn’t have to find another. I echo what others have said, this place will be missed. Good luck to you. I wish you the best.