Blogfather Denied Xmas Pony For 13th Straight Year

It was 2007, and Blez offered me the chance to join him on the front page as his first additional front page writer. “I can’t offer you any money right now,” he explained, “though I hope to be able to sometime soon.”

“No worries,” I replied, adding that all I really needed to be happy was a pony for Christmas. Xmas, 2007 came and went and while there was no pony delivered to my home I chalked it up to a misunderstanding — obviously Blez had thought I was kidding and I had not taken enough pains to establish otherwise.

So you can imagine the anticipation on Christmas Day, 2008, when I restated my hopes in no uncertain terms. As midnight came and went, I found myself going through the classic 5 stages of grief: Anger, bourbon, whiskey, anger, and vodka.

Over the next few years I started expressing my Xmas wishes more frequently, meanwhile taking my increasing frustrations out on a poor carcass of a pony I had found along side the highway, but I soon stopped because I felt like I was beating a dead horse. (See, Vox, this is what you’d be losing if you were to let this gem get away.)

By the mid-2010s, my drink of choice was a White Russian and I was banging a girl named Sherry. Or it might have been the other way around, I’m not really sure. Anyway, the point is neither alcoholism nor failed relationships — it’s that yesterday marked the 13th consecutive year that Christmas came and went and no pony.

Actually wait, I’m Jewish. So maybe I’m getting 8 tiny ponies or something, I don’t know. All I know is...

...For Christmas dinner, Cindi unveiled her new “Bouillabaisse With A Bouillon Base, Get it?” Well, Cindi, if “get it” refers to getting food poisoning then that would be an affirmative. But having seen my Aunt Bertha and Uncle Perv off to the airport this morning, I have time to wax serious for a moment on AN...

First off, I know there was some thought that my silence following “The Thorman Post” reflected either that I was unable or unwilling to join the conversation. In fact it reflected only that I was on the road and not on AN that day until close to dinner time. You can be assured of two things: that I will never be coerced into silence or told what to say, that I will never lie or spin anything, that I will persist in offering up terrible jokes in the hope that enough people mistake them for shrewd baseball analysis, and that I can’t count.

So now that I am back home, let me say something unequivocal: the AN as you know and love will be here, on the interwebs, after the dust clears. I believe it will be right here at this URL, but if not the community is strong enough to pick up every member and land in a bizarro world version of itself probably not called “Noitan Scitelhta” only because who the hell wants to say that out loud? “I just posted something on NOY-tan ski-TELL-hi-tah,” remarked no one ever.

But all seriousness aside, this community needs to know how strong and powerful it is. If this is the community you want, it’s the community we’re all going to have and no one, and no it, is capable of taking it away. That’s not some Blogfather standing on a virtual cinder block spouting feel good drivel — it happens to be entirely true. And while I do, personally, believe it will be right here (points to virtual space where www.athleticsnation.com presumably is found in proper alphabetical order in the cloud thingy I have never understood and almost certainly never will), the fact is that communities are ultimately defined less by “where” than by “whom”.

#ANstrong or something like that.

What else did I want to say? Oh...Cesar Hernandez signed with the Indians for 1 year/$6.25M. I would have been fine with it had the A’s inked Hernandez to, say, a 2 year/$11M deal — especially since a second year would have provided insurance against losing Marcus Semien to free agency. I don’t know if the A’s made any offer to Hernandez and if so, whether it was for one year, two years, and how much, but his signing is the first one where I have gone, “Aww...I wouldn’t have minded the A’s getting in on that.”

Hopefully, 2B and AN will be resolved soon and even more hopefully, Alex Hall won’t be our 2Bman with Brock Holt managing the front page. HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE!