What a year it has been. 8765.81278 hours to be exact. I never really thought I would be sitting here, a year later, talking about a blog of mine being a success. Man, was I wrong about how this turned out. Sure, Philly Sports Port is not known as one of the top Philadelphia sports blogs, but I am ok with that. A site with Philly sports fans writing about Philly sports being read by people throughout our community, sometimes even outside of it...well that is all I can ask for. My big thing is finding enjoyment in the material I write. Is all of it spot on accurate?...Nope, but that is what makes it so enjoyable. Being able to express opinion and back them up with some facts, stats, etc. here and there. Well there is a lot to look back on in Philly Sports Ports first year and I think it would be a good idea to highlight what I think were the stand out points.
First off, for those of you who don't know, Philly Sports Port was not a huge project to start. In July of 2009, my mom was in the hospital for surgery and I spent hours in the waiting area with my laptop. The hospital had wireless internet so of course, I found myself on facebook and gchat just kinda fiddling around. I was talking to Dan Cymerman at one point and just brought up the idea of doing a sports blog. The idea was kinda shrugged off because of our conflicting schedules and other things on our plate. After talking to him, I kinda just got the urge to start something, even though in my mind, it would probably only last a week or two before I got bored with it. I clicked over to google sites and created my own website and spent a few hours thinking of a name. I don't really remember what I was thinking about when the name popped into my head, but I just thought that Sports Port was cool because in short, it just spelled the work sport twice. Originally, the site was called The Sports Port and had a dull, yellow legal paper background with blue font that stood out. I made tabs for each sport and shot the site over to Dan. He liked the idea a lot and suggested a lot of things into improving it and helping write. So, I guess I could call myself the single founder of this blog, but Dan was just a big part in the beginning and was a great help in jump starting this thing. Around this time last year, the big talk was about the Phillies getting Roy Halladay in a trade, but eventually acquiring Cliff Lee. Dan and I shared opposed viewpoints on this subject, so we had our first debate. From there, we found other subjects to talk about (Mike Vick signing and the eventual trade for Cliff Lee). It was easy to tell that within the first days of the site, it was gonna be fun.
Following the first few articles, we decided to make this facebook public and made a fan group about it just to get feedback from friends on what they thought about our writing and the whole idea. We grew a small fan base to start out and eventually stirred up the idea of having a radio show. It took a few months to develop, but before we knew it, The Sports Port was growing into something bigger. The biggest changes came in September 2009, when the name was changed from The Sports Port to Philly Sports Port. The whole site template changed to a more sleek look. We also got our own domain, thanks to Dan's brother Scott.
At the end of September/beginning of October, John Shoemaker (aka Shoe) and Jake Blum hopped on board with us to bring the radio show idea to life. We began live streaming our show, PSP Live, despite many technical difficulties week to week, in early October. The show aired every Tuesday night and we even held our own Thanksgiving football draft on the air. Throughout the show, we had many guests appear, including Doug Lavenberg, Brandon Zanan and Dave Blum. They all brought different opinions and views to the show, which made it more enjoyable for our listeners. The guys on the show were very insightful as well. Jake did great impersonations of long-time Eagles play-by-play voice, Merrill Reese and his partner Mike Quick while his brother Dave did a great impression of Gary "Sarge" Matthews. This brought a whole new sort of humor to the show and it was just a great atmosphere to work in. The show averaged 15-20 viewers a week, which was about as many as we would expect with our small community of fans. PSP Live was changed to Philly Sports Port Live! early in 2010 due to copyright issues with Playstation Portable online, which had the same name.
2010 brought new things the the Port. The biggest thing was the addition of writers. My specialty was baseball while Dan was a big college football/basketball fan. We brought in John Casey and Scott Weinhardt for the Flyers early in 2009 and they did a fantastic job throughout the entire season and run to the Stanley Cup. John and Scott have brought so much in terms of knowledge and understanding of the game. Having the privilege to read their thoughts on the Flyers was great every time they came out with something new. Chris Sherman soon joined for Eagles and Philadelphia Union. Sherman has a great passion for the sport of soccer and even though I dislike the sport, I really enjoy hearing what he has to say on Philadelphia's newest sport franchise. Just recently, we brought on Ira Luke to provide fantasy analysis. Ira is a coworker of mine from the Blue Rocks. Even though he has only been on board for a little over a week or so, he has been working hard to give fantasy players the tips that they need.
The last thing I am going to touch on is the changing into a blog. We are still very active on both this site and the blog but the blogspot page for Philly Sports Port has given our readers a chance to comment and submit feedback if they so please. The blog automatically feeds into facebook, so any time a writer posts something new it will go directly towards facebook. This blog has helped us reach out to the social networking sites. We also have a twitter account that goes right into facebook that provides fans with live breaking news updates from the sporting world. Shoe has done a great job heading it up and has kept our supporters up to date on what is going on in sports.
So much has happened in a year and I only hope that this will grow even more in the year to come. The summer poses issues for all of us here at Philly Sports Port, so in terms of doing a radio show, we hope to resume that come September or October. I hope you all enjoyed reading all of this to see how far this has come. A special thanks to Dan Cymerman, Shoe, Jake, John Casey, Scott and Ira for all of your hard work writing these articles and your weekly assistance on the radio show if you participated.
Here is to an even better year two!!
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