Or: Looking Forward to the Past

It's hard to believe, but this will be the sixth season of Cubs baseball covered by the rambunctious writers of GROTA.  In the time that we've been blogging, we've seen the Cubs organization pillaged by the poor management of Dusty Baker and Andy MacPhail, we've watched the thunderbolt-tossing arms of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior disintegrate in a cloud of overuse and abuse, and we've seen Jim Hendry rebuild the team atop a pile of assets that have turned from liquid to toxic.  In other words, it's been a long, tumultuous, exciting ride that is still lacking in a satisfying payoff. 

While we obviously cannot predict where the Cubs go next -- although a swirling pit of mediocrity isn't a harsh assumption -- I'd like to tell you a bit of what may be in store for GROTA.

Firstly, we're developing a new skin design for the blog.  In case you aren't familiar with our skins, the standard Green Scoreboard skin is one of more than half a dozen.  If you're a member of the website, you can log in, change the look (and some of them are pretty sweet), and even participate in our Shout Box.  Check out that feature if you already haven't.

Of course, that may become a moot point as we are weighing several offers to join various sports networks.  Up til now, GROTA has been fiercely independent, but becoming one with a network is an increasingly enticing consideration. 

If we do actually network-up, we may introduce a readers forum.  Such a thing would require moderators.  If there's a chance I'd recognize you as being a contributor to GROTA and you think that's something you might be interested in doing, drop me a line. 

Speaking of contributors to GROTA, I'd like to thank our writers for all their hard work.  Rob and AJ in particular have been picking up the slack, especially since a good chunk of our team moved on to bigger things or retired from blogging (Jason is a new father with a time-consuming job, leaving him with just enough spare time to lose his mind and Byron is an ass-kickin' workin' man), while Kyle has left our hallowed blog for the halls of the Chicago Tribune, where he slaves over the sports desk.  And let's not forget that Colin is now writing for Baseball Prospectus while still-goat-riding AJ is working his ass off for a magazine in Tampa.  In other words, maybe it's a coincidence, but GROTA writers seem to get good jobs writing.  We're rather proud of that fact.

Last year, as a way of proving to ourselves that it could be done by a simple blog, we covered every single game of the season.  We wrote Series Previews, GameCasts, and Game Recaps.  It's a hugely time-consuming commitment that requires the participation of responsible people and will probably not be duplicated for the 2010 season.  However, if you are a writer with a demonstratable body of work and would be receptive to exposing your skills to the large audience GROTA commands, EMail me at kjsevans (at) gmail (dot) com.  If we can get people who'd be interested in sharing the responsibility, we'll continue the tradition (and we'll even pay you an insulting sum of money in the process).