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We talked to three of the big guns in VEB’s blogging lineup—founder Larry Borowsky, Tim McCullough and Aaron Schafer—for a glimpse into the lives of baseball’s most analytical fans.
Larry Borowsky (a.k.a. lboros)
- Borowsky grew up in St. Louis, but currently lives just minutes from Coors Field in Denver. (His kids, ages 3 and 5, “know of the Rockies”—but like the Cardinals.)
- When he’s not blogging about baseball, Borowsky writes “interpretive text”—i.e., those tiny captions by exhibits—for history museums.
- Borowsky tracks the birds on the bat by laptop, subscribing to MLB.com’s online TV/radio package, reading numerous baseball blogs and checking STLtoday.
- Since VEB hit big in 2006, he’s written about baseball for The Wall Street Journal Online, MSNBC’s Slate Magazine and The Hardball Times, an online baseball magazine.
- On the game: “I know sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, and I’m the same person no matter what. I don’t get carried away with it the way I used to.”
Tim McCullough (a
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- A typical week in this SIUE electrical engineering graduate student’s life: Contributing to Viva El Birdos and Future Redbirds (a minor league baseball blog), teaching two labs and writing his thesis—and reading a book a week just for fun.
- “He’s a giant bank of computers somewhere—I don’t think he’s real,” says a fellow blogger.
- The name azruavatar? “Wish it was a bit less nerdy,” says McCullough: It comes from a character in Magic: The Gathering.
- Human or cyborg, the kid’s no fantasy baseball guru: “I played last year, and I was awful. I placed last in the league.”
- On Cardinals fandom: “They call it baseball heaven for a reason in St. Louis—I think that kind of spontaneous sense of community, it’s really amazing.”
Aaron Schafer (a.k.a. the red baron)
- Reducing this Jefferson County sales rep down to bullet points isn’t easy. “I’m sort of a bludgeoner, essentially,” he says. “I carry a giant club made of verbiage.”
- Schafer learned stats from his grandfather, who played minor league ball after WWII “until he tore up his hip as a switchman for the railroad.”
- The Red Baron? “It’s relatively close to my own name, has red in it for the team and picks up the Peanuts reference”—to Snoopy, the WWI Flying Ace.
- How he tracks the game: “I have the MLB Extra Innings thing through DirecTV.”
- His philosophy: “To me, baseball is your friend. Every night, whatever you’re doing, you turn on the radio, and there’s a baseball game. It’s woven into the fabric of your life. It’s a comforting thing.”
