Sunday, December 29, 2013

AB4AR's 2013 "Best And Worst Of The Year": The Preseason

(Joe, Randy, Lonn, and Hal at the Jorge retirement presser.  Courtesy of Getty Images)

The 2013 calendar year is winding down and there's little going on in the way of Yankee news right now, so let's take a look back at the year that was for AB4AR.  2013 was another record year for the site, more posts, comments, and pageviews than ever before.  A big thank you goes out to everyone who read regularly and commented to help make that happen.  I know I'm woefully behind the times when it comes to blog design, layout, social media tie-ins, and all that, and it really just comes down to the fact that I don't have or want to have the time for all those other things.  I'm just a Yankee fan who likes to write about the Yankees and do as much as I can in the time my day job and social life will allow me, and to have more people than ever recognize and follow that basic, rudimentary format this year means a lot to me.

As we did last year, we'll break the 2013 review down into 3 parts: preseason, regular season, and postseason/offseason.  Today we'll tackle the preseason, the block of time from January 1st through the end of March, when the hot stove season was winding down and Spring Training was ramping up.