How To Read The Slurve

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We know what you're thinking: how do we get use out of this newsletter?  Here are some samples: Here's a sample. And here's another. And one more.  But let's go through some screenshots of a recent edition and show you what we do:

This is the header. It's mostly just for visual interest and to give you a sense of what's going to be the top story that day. On May 14th it was Jake Westbrook. We went into great detail about how well he has pitched recently. 

This is the start of the email. We call it the Opening Pitch. This is where we highlight the best stuff written about baseball yesterday and offer some original takes on it.  

Sometimes we just describe the article and link out to it. We try to let you know where the link is taking you. Subscribers know that [stlpd] is the St. Louis Post and Dispatch.

Sometimes we quote a paragraph to give you a better sense about what the conversation in baseball is that day.

When we can, we really like to unearth hidden gems here, like an interview with a former top-prospect who has become a monk, or some beautiful tone-poem about how miserable it is to be a Mets fan. 

The idea of this section is to give you the most insightful and most fun items. We think all the items in our opening pitch are essential in some way. 

Then there is a section we call Major Updates. Here we make sure we include all 30 teams every day.  This is a section that rewards skimming for most people. 

It's here that we list all the scores from the night before, and link to three or four items about each team.

We start with a recap of the game. We'll link to whatever injury or roster stories are important that day for each team. And we try to find the best contributions of fan blogs. It could be GIFs, rants, laments, celebrations - whatever is worthwhile. 

If you run your eye over this section you'll develop a sense of what's going on with each team. 


Next we have a section that just groups together all the Injury Reports that appeared in our "Major Updates" section?

Why repeat them?  

Because some people play fantasy baseball and just need to run their eyes over these quickly.  We hope to have more sections that appeal to fantasy fans soon. 

Goods From Around the Web is at the end of each newsletter. This is really just a place to have fun before you actually have to return to thinking about whatever is happening on your workday. We try to link to cultural stories that are worth seeing. It's here you'll find stuff about music, new movie trailers, and even a little bit about other sports from time to time. 

This is just the beginning for The Slurve. We hope to have so much more in the near future, including original charts and graphics that instantly tell you more about a player or team's performance than we can in a few paragraphs. All of that is in the works right now. 

So please, give a chance and subscribe today. 

What People Are Saying About The Slurve

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We're less than a week out from our launch and already The Slurve is being read by baseball insiders.  

Sports media pros like Will Leitch (Deadspin, NYMag, Sports on Earth) and Jeff Pearlman (author of Love Me, Hate Me, and The Rocket that Fell To Earth) are talking about it.

And our subscribers are excited about it too:

But the best comment probably came through email this morning from a new subscriber. 

"The results are already beginning to show: Yesterday’s edition allowed me to talk baseball with my dad – a better follower of the game than I’ve ever been – and even throw in some bits he didn’t know." - Jeff, subscriber.

We're really excited about what we're building here for and with our subscribers. If you haven't, sign up!

A Golden Age

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Our lead story today happens to be my panegyric about the current state of baseball, found in the Daily Beast. I believe we are living in a Golden Age. 

An under-remarked quality also distinguishes baseball and sports in general from our other national obsessions. After the game is played, we all agree on the facts. Every reporter and fan walks away from a game knowing the score and agreeing on the number of hits. Fans of a losing team are not made to feel less American, or less dignified than the winners. We do not suspect that this game and its players are destroying the American way of life.

For a long time as a political reporter and opinion journalist, I looked sideways at sports-writing. So inconsequential, so trivial. (Wherever did I get the idea that political writing was usually of great merit?) But for the past few years, and against my own expectations for my life, sports have become more important to me: as a refuge from strife, as a preserve of human excellence in a culture that revels in mediocrity, as a place to reconnect with my friends who would otherwise drift away as their lives diverge from my own.

As you can see, this also gets at why I decided to launch The Slurve.

The Start of Something

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I've wanted to launch The Slurve for a long time. And today's the day!

Here's a test run of the newsletter. Here is today's. 

So, why? I love baseball, and I love reading about baseball. I play fantasy baseball. I like to follow the whole league. But whenever I tried to move out beyond my favorite team and a few of my favorite players, I found myself wading through a lot of junk or stuff that was just irrelevant to me. I wanted an interactive digest that would highlight the most interesting and most important stories of the day. I wanted something that would allow me to skim the best of the rest and dive in wherever I needed. 

I think the Slurve does that really well right now. And I have so many more ideas on how to make this the email you look forward to every morning.  Subscribe already!