Remember how Philip Morris changed its name to Altria so people wouldn’t always be reminded of the fact that they sell things that give you cancer? And how ValueJet changed its name to AirTran so people wouldn’t always be reminded of all of those people who died in that crash? And how Datsun changed its name to Nissan because, well, I’m not sure about why they did that one, but remember when it happened?
Well, we’re doing the opposite: we’re changing the name of this concern to foster some positive associations: some time this week we’ll be switching from Circling the Bases to HardballTalk.
I know there are a lot of people out there who hate change — I’m usually one of them — but we’re doing this for a couple of reasons. Most obviously — and I’m not going to b.s. you about it — is the branding thing. Our brother blog ProFootballTalk is one of the most popular and successful things going in sports media and we’d be nuts not to try and leach off of some of Florio’s redonkulous traffic.
Another reason: starting today the estimable Kurt Helin, late of Forum Blue and Gold joins the NBC Family to launch ProBasketballTalk (which I highly recommend that you start reading on a daily basis). By changing our name to HardballTalk we’re rocking the thematic consistency across the major sports.
Those of you who have read me for a long time have known me to snark about branding. And I’ll still snark at it because branding is kind of a silly concept on some level. I mean, just because you give something a new name doesn’t change what it is. This, however, is different.
Why? Because here the names flow from the concept, not vice-versa. In launching CTB last April and bringing PFT over a month or two later, NBC really set out to change the way sports are done online. On every other major media site the blogging and commentary takes backseat to the wire reports and the overpriced columnists and is buried in the mix. Here the conversation — the “talk” if you will — is what leads. Florio, Helin and all of the rest of us around here know that you’re big boys and girls and rather than have someone declare the news to you from on high, you can handle it being put out there and hashed through immediately. Which allows you to start hashing thorough it too, in as close to real time as possible.
Put differently, when Jon Heyman tells you something, he expects you to take his word for it. When I tell you something, I hope, and have come to expect, that you’ll tell me if I’m full of baloney within five minutes. If I am, I’ll rethink and then you will and then we’ll fight about it and then we’ll laugh about it and maybe we’ll all have learned a little bit or, at the very least wasted some time. It’s a conversation. We’re just talking here. About baseball. The name, in other words, fits.
If none of that convinces you just ask yourself: What’s “Circling the Bases?” It is nor hand nor foot nor arm nor face nor any other part belonging to a blog. That which we call CTB by any other name would smell as sweet. The content isn’t changing. Just the name. And I think we can all deal with it.
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- BC - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:02 AM
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1. Nardil – you are correct. Its the only way I can stand being a Mets fan.
2. Kelly Lebrock in Weird Science I think trumps them all. Although in the present, no one beats my Drew (and no, not J.D. or Steven):
http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Drew-Barrymore-drew-barrymore-81927_1024_768.jpg
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- Wooden U. Lykteneau - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:03 AM
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Huh. I always heard it was when they hired a German engineering firm to evaluate their operations and they asked if they could come up with a brand name within 24 hours and the name came from the reply “Dat Soon?”
Thank you, I’m here all week – try the veal.
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- Bubba Lebowski (no relation) - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:04 AM
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Does that mean, like, I have to change my name too, man?
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- BC - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:11 AM
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Get the “E” crossed out, and start a fishing blog: “Circling the Bass”.
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- Chadillac - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:30 AM
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@Word – I thought the same thing. I hope this means we don’t have to type in all caps. That guy gives me a headache.
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- nfieldr - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:55 AM
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Since NBC is the network home of the NHL, it should finish out the Big Four with BluelineTalk.
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- Jason @ IIATMS - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:57 AM
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Get the “B” crossed out, and start a voyeur blog: “Circling the Ass”.
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- Jason @ IIATMS - Feb 8, 2010 at 11:58 AM
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Whatever the guys paying your non-lawyer paychecks say is good enough for us, CC. Just so long as they don’t mess with the content that you and the rest of the crew put out daily.
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- BC - Feb 8, 2010 at 12:04 PM
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That would have to be a Tiger Woods or Steve Phillips blog I’d gather…
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- spudchukar - Feb 8, 2010 at 12:04 PM
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So, will Chris Matthews be a regular contributor? Ahh, lets dump the poetic Circling the Bases, for oh, I dunno, HardTalk,or HardBaseball, or HardTalkBaseball, geez how dis
appointing!
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- Old Gator - Feb 8, 2010 at 12:16 PM
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My present goddess is Gillian, one of the bellydancers from Shimmy. Let me tell you a little story before I post this link. It’s not like I ever had a thing for belly dancers, except perhaps an aversive one. I’m the guy they always single out to drag onto the floor and humiliate while I’m trying, as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, to eat my felafel at the local topnotch Middle Eastern restaurant on any given weekend evening. So I wasn’t carrying any torches for one of them – tribal fusion or not. However, used to be that Shimmy directly followed the midday broadcast of Namaste Yoga (which sports a baker’s half-dozen of its own living goddesses) on Discover Channel’s FitTV, to which I practice some of those murderous stretches and human-pretzel moves about three times a week to get the ole’ Kundalini climbing the chakras and keep myself from curling up with senescence like an incriminating letter in a fireplace. So there I am, holding a damned near perfect lateral crow, when the program ends and on comes Shimmy, and there’s….Gillian. Suddenly, I find my lower quadrant inexplicably being jacked up and my center of gravity dislocated and topple forward on the bridge of my nose. When I come to, I’m watching a Cialis commercial.
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The elements of this narrative starting to come together, folks?
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So anyway, I start sitting around in front of the TV, usually with a plate of felafel to use as bait to lure Gillian back onscreen. And, as Virginia Woolf famously wrote at the conclusion of Mrs. Dalloway, there she was. When the following link opens, click on “Gillian” at the upper center:
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http://www.shimmy.tv/about_us.html
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I threw in the rest of them so you could work out your own bizarre predilections too.
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- Old Gator - Feb 8, 2010 at 12:18 PM
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It does. Your current name is entirely too vaginal.
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And stay out of my beachfront community!
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- BC - Feb 8, 2010 at 12:24 PM
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I just usually look around for a rerun of “JAG”. Hoo-aaah…
http://xbradtc.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/catherine_bell450_930.jpg
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- IdahoMariner - Feb 8, 2010 at 12:44 PM
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ah, I’m disappointed. CTB was a bit poetic and communicated just fine. And I can’t stand PFT (and not just because I don’t watch pro football anymore — the reasons I occasionally click on PFT and instantly regret it are myriad and boring, I am sure)– it’s got Florio, first of all. Please, Craig, do NOT try to get more readers by becoming THAT. Because you might get more, but they will be more of the kind you can’t stand. The reason I loved Shysterball, aside from your inestimable entries, was that the people commenting were thoughtful and willing to debate and argue and even go off on interesting tangents, not just slam each other, and it felt like an actual community of people who loved the game but knew a little something about other stuff, too. I get that this was going to change when you came over to CTB, but it didn’t change all that much, and Florio’s stuff and his commenters embody all that is loathsome about net-abuse. (And please don’t co-opt his graphics — they suck).
My second thought is that the new name sounds a lot like HardballTimes. Hmmmmmmmm…..
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- Old Gator - Feb 8, 2010 at 1:04 PM
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You know, it occurs to me – can we ask Craig to move this entire skien over to the Steve Phillips thread, which is where it really belongs? Future generations – to whom this particular thread will be no more than myth, legend, dust – are going to go looking for it over there anyway. That, and I hate to see my dirty old manhood being subducted beneath the advancing tectonic plate of corporate commodification. But hey, Marshall McLuhan warned us about this forty years ago, didn’t he?
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- Moses Green - Feb 8, 2010 at 1:06 PM
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Let’s face it, anything is better than Circling the Bases. The new name is nothing special and I’m trying hard to forget that it’s part of an NBC brand-rollout. The phrase “NBC brand-rollout” should induce cold shivers in all of you who are now paid to write about about your hard balls.
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- Megary - Feb 8, 2010 at 1:12 PM
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With all these links being posted, this site is way better than…um…never mind.
By the way, at the bottom of this page under “sports”, does anyone else find it odd that “poker” gets a listing? That isn’t a sport, regardless what ESPN would have you believe. A great game to play while watching sports, maybe…
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- Stone - Feb 8, 2010 at 1:25 PM
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Then why not go with probaseballtalk.com???
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- BC - Feb 8, 2010 at 1:36 PM
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I prefer alldrewbarrymoreallthetime.com. Has nothing to do with the content of the site, but you’ll attract readers…
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- 2cents - Feb 8, 2010 at 3:02 PM
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Same bar, same barflies, different name…no big deal. Just don’t change the jukebox.
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- Will Shook Down - Feb 8, 2010 at 3:37 PM
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Craig, is full-text RSS not too far behind?
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- fuzzballthemagnificent - Feb 8, 2010 at 5:20 PM
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“It is nor hand nor foot nor arm nor face nor any other part belonging to a blog. That which we call CTB by any other name would smell as sweet.” OK, but remember, Craig, that was first said by a 13-year-old who never left the house and ends up dead. I’m not sure that’s such a hot recommendation.
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- Tony A - Feb 8, 2010 at 7:12 PM
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I still call it Shysterball…
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- Wells - Feb 8, 2010 at 7:47 PM
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Circling the Bases made me feel like you never got home. It was exhausting. Just an eternity, circling bases. It’s good to be home.
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- Michael - Feb 9, 2010 at 5:14 AM
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We’ll have cawfee, we’ll tawk.
We’ll tawk about hardbawl, Bawnds, the Brawnx Bawmbers…no big whoop.
