Memorializing the living seems weird

But sometimes the weird is the necessary, I suppose.

Most Braves fans have probably heard that Mac, the rightly knighted "OG blogger" of all Braves-related internet fora, is continuing his on-going battles with cancer, and the big C seems to have gained the upper hand of late. This, quite obviously, sucks. Cancer, quite notably, never produced a series of YouTube bits detailing the various ways in which Mike Hampton repeatedly disabled himself, after all.

All relevant speakers have, quite rightly again, thrown out the internet love and best wishes. I figured I might as well brush off the DLF dust and add a bit of mumble to the chorus. Even though it seems a bit odd, eulogizing a guy that's still kicking around over there, right? I mean, I sort of have this image of Mac raising his head up from the cart and saying "I'm not dead yet." But hey, shit gets weird on the webs and you roll with the punches.

My Google-fu is as rusty as this blog is dusty, and Google Groups is notoriously bad at archiving old Usenet shit, but regardless, this is the earliest conversation that I can quickly find that includes myself and Mac. It's from alt.sports.baseball.atlanta-braves. From 1998. It's about Javy Lopez and his relationship to the Braves' starting rotation. I had sort of assumed it would be about Bret Boone.

My first thought upon digging that up was "my god, I've known these people for 15 years." My second thought was "what the hell happened to Billy (KeyHit) and Gregg Rosenberg?!"

It doesn't look like Mac really needs me to tell him to keep fighting or whatnot. I'm pretty sure he knows as much as all that already. So I'll confine it to this.

Dude. It's been a good run. I particularly thought the Mike Hampton videos were better than the Road from Bristol bit, but that's just me. I appreciate you putting up with my shit over the years. So... Chin up. Fight the good fight. All that jazz.

Oh, and I really like Calcaterra's suggestion that you kick its ass and name your kid after where it lives, a la Chipper and Shea, but that would be really weird if it were like, in your spleen. I mean, who names their kid "Spleen?"