What the Heck is Baseball Diary?

Way back in the 1980's, instead of blogs there were zines. Relatively speaking, a whole lot less people did zines than now do blogs (although there were more than you think, just take a look at an old Factsheet Five). Zines were actually words written on paper, in various formats, often with a typewriter, and stapled together. Some (a VERY few) of the formats were professional magazine quality, but most were extremely low-fi, because the publishers had no money. They were distributed by hand and snail mail. Baseball Diary was in the low-fi category, but what we lacked in glossy paper we made up for in writing and graphics. (Hey, Stephen King became a subscriber, that must count for something?) Started in 1982, Baseball Diary's "mission statement" (yeah, right!) was to explore the intersection between baseball and art, usually observed through the lens of the mundane details of everyday life. The interpretation of what might fit into our pages was so broad that almost anything baseball related was publication fodder. The solicitation for submissions read: "Baseball Diary is accepting submissions of a personal, penetrating nature related to baseball: prose, poetry visuals and letters are welcome". BD was only published during the baseball season, and for most of its life, it came out weekly during those months.

In honor of Baseball Diary's 29th Anniversary (why wait for 30?), we are starting a new volume this season (hoping it will continue year-round), and will begin posting most back issues, starting with Vol I #8 from 1982. The older issues will be posted at the archive blog: a "time capsule" of some baseball fans (and non-fans) living in Los Angeles (and other places) in the 80's. Actual evidence is shaky, but I believe Volume X Number 1, from October, 1994, was the last issue. It was the only issue in a different format: instead of the 8 1/2 x 11 stapled pages, it was half the size in a kind of "booklet" format. And starting with this post, Baseball Diary Vol XI is born! To all of you who may be interested in participating, send us your baseball related personal and penetrating essays and art. Our goal is to have a BD "correspondent" representing (you don't have to live there) every major league city (or not; you don't have to "represent" a city to be published). Many of the original writers and artists have promised posts, and we hope to find a lot of newcomers. Hope you will be along for the ride. Play ball!