Sometimes the answer to the question is, I don't know. I work a full-time job and have a wife, child, other family, and friends. Just like a lot of people. I'm lucky in that my job doesn't generally demand more than 40 of my weekly hours, and that I can take lunch hours and breaks and such to see just what's happening in the Giants newsgroup. I spend maybe two or three hours a week online at home, too. The bulk of my EEEEEE! time, though, generally takes place on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, after my wife and son have conked out. That's about the only time I have to myself these days.

Preparation for a (usually) weekly installment of notes begins with just capturing e-mail messages and newsgroup posts, including my own, and saving them in a mail folder in Netscape -- really a single text file, rather than a folder. Come Friday, there are usually at least 100 messages, sometimes far more. On Saturday I'll combine these messages with whatever messages I might have saved at home during the week. I then run the text file through a kind of mail-sorting program that helps me prioritize topics and decide what to use that week.

Timing and timeliness, as you might reasonably expect, are key. For instance, last week there might have been a terrific discussion about, say, how awful certain newsgroup trolls are, and this week there might be a hundred very funny follow-up posts... but I probably won't discuss that topic in the new installment, because it's just been done. In other words, despite the often prodigious length of EEEEEE! installments, and the rather strong evidence that I don't have an editor, especially one with an eye for brevity, EEEEEE! actually does have a cutting-room floor, so to speak. I only hope that not including some of these fine observations, pithy comments, and hysterical rantings doesn't offend any of the observers, commenters, or ranters.

But the heart and soul of the installments, really, are found in the Giants newsgroup. That's where most of the quotes come from, including mine. I don't post as prolifically now as I have in the past, partly because I have less time available, but also because I can propound the same arguments only so many times before I start to get tired of them. Those particular arguments seem to boil down to:

• Barry Bonds is a great player. We're lucky he's here.

• Walks are a good thing. They help build runs. Runs help build wins.

That doesn't mean you'll never see me go on about this stuff again -- just that I'm cutting back some.

I've been doing EEEEEE! for three years now, but I've been involved in the newsgroup for the last four, if you don't count the time I spent lurking in 1993-94, before I suddenly found myself without newsgroup access. During all this time, alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants has been engaging, thoughtful, tight-knit, interesting, fun, funny, angry, desperate, nutty -- all in a good way. I can't get enough of you people. Sure, undesired elements slink in from time to time, but usually they slink away again. But no matter what happens to the Giants, the newsgroup cannot be defeated. There's a "band of brothers" feel -- and sisters, though they're less prevalent -- that appeals to me very deeply, which is probably why I've always loved TV shows like Star Trek and Red Dwarf: They're about teams of basically decent, intelligent people living by their wits, forging strong bonds, and succeeding against frightful odds as they work toward a common goal. That's kind of how I see the newsgroup, except that the common goal -- which, let's be honest, is To Find Some Way Somehow To Make Our Giants Win -- is much more like the Impossible Dream.

What surprises and pleases me is that as near as I can tell, it's mostly Giants newsgroup habitués who read EEEEEE! -- people who've already read most of the content in the newsgroup already. You folks seem to have taken a kind of "It's ours" stance about EEEEEE!. This works just fine for me. In the beginning, I thought of it as just "mine," but it was less fun then. This was back before I had any, you know, readers.

In the early days, really only my sister Debra read EEEEEE!, and some friends I mentioned it to might drop me an e-mail saying, "Nice site. Lots of words." But that was about it. It actually took me a few weeks, at least, before I even thought of telling the newsgroup about it -- these people with whom I conversed daily, albeit electronically. It took a few more weeks, at least, before I had the courage to actually tell the group. And several months before I started announcing updates on a regular basis. I didn't want to turn the group into my own personal website spamming place, so I chose not to be pushy about EEEEEE! Finally, one newsgroup member suggested letting the group know about updates, and no one has seemed to mind since.

Not everybody in the group reads EEEEEE! That's okay with me. My approach isn't for everybody, especially those of you who happen to be more optimistic by nature. But I still get a pleasant surprise when I hear from one of the long-time members, people who've been in the group as long as (or longer than) I have, who'll drop me an e-mail saying that they'd read it, or have read it since the beginning, religiously or not. I've developed friendships, too, with at least a couple of non-Giants fans who first contacted me through EEEEEE!, and I truly appreciate that.

In fact, most of my online friendships have come about through EEEEEE! somehow, if not through the newsgroup itself. To those who deride online friendships as, say, computer geekitude in the extreme, denoting an inability to deal with interpersonal relationships on a personal basis, I say, you don't know what you're talking about. I've met a number of folks socially after having struck up friendships with them online, and by the time I meet them, the ice has been broken. We're already friends.

The members of the EEEEEE "editorial staff" are all friends of mine. Tom Austin, a celebrity of sorts because of his writing gig with The Big Bad Baseball Annual, first contacted me, shortly after EEEEEE! hit the Web, after reading my pieces about baseball cards and "The Game." Turned out we had a lot in common in our "baseball histories," and similar views on lots of things, some even more important than baseball or the Giants, if you can imagine. I've read a lot of Tom's writing over the last three years, and I really enjoy his style, which I'd call colorful, interesting, fun, and a little offbeat. I like his non-baseball stuff just as much as his baseball stuff, and it's only a shame he's an engineer, because everybody knows engineers can't write.

Richard Booroojian sort of showed up in the newsgroup one day, as did I, but made his mark immediately with witty, thought-provoking posts, and though we hadn't really struck up any kind of relationship beyond responding to each other's messages in the group, he made it clear that he liked what EEEEEE! is about, and pitched a story idea. Given Richard's obvious writing ability, I was thrilled to accept his offer of a free piece, and as far as I'm concerned, we've all reaped the benefits of his creativity. I've come to value not only Richard's talent, but his friendship as well. And the sight of him dickering with strangers for an Alex Diaz card on Trading Card Day was one that I will never shake.

David Beck is EEEEEE!'s first writer not named Gregg. We've been the closest of friends for over 20 years, despite some widely differing elements of our personalities and lifestyles. For instance, I'm sane. But we've been well acquainted with each other's writing for most of that time, starting with comedy sketches that we'd perform as part of our cassette-tape correspondence in the late '70s and early '80s. Dave truly has a gift for this, and believe me, it was a real task trying to keep up with him. Unlike me, he was smart enough to figure out early on that he liked to write, and nurtured his creativity by taking writing classes, which I never bothered to do. I've read hundreds of pages of David Beck prose, ranging from the deadly serious to the astoundingly silly, and it's always one-sitting material. Everything he writes, as far as I'm concerned, is an invitation for the reader to think. Also, he's always encouraged me in my writing, and often is my best sounding board.

I'm proud to say that three other writers have joined EEEEEE! in the past year. Todd Hawley, whom I had the honor of meeting at the second alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants Day at the 'Stick last year, has taken time off from putting together his San Francisco Seals website to tell us things we didn't know about the Pacific Coast League, and David Malbuff, who does the Giants column for the Sportznutz website, has sent me his daily journals from the 1993, 1997, and 1998 seasons. I've run the first of those, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to run the others -- probably when this extremely stressful season ends, and Giants fans would prefer to read about happier days. I hope to meet David some day, and let him know how much I appreciate his effort, not only on those journals and his column, but in his "Giants Complete Breakdown" newsletter, the most detailed statistical analysis of one team that I've ever seen.

The most recent writer to grace the stable is Woody, whose astoundingly odd sentiments have graced the newsgroup for close to three years. Woody wrote "Rookie Sleeves" after spending time at the Giants Fantasy Camp last February, and thanks to that article, I'll never be able to look at Greg Minton, Wendell Kim, Mark Grant, and many other ex-Giants personnel the same way again. "Woody," of course, is a pseudonym, because he doesn't want me to reveal that his name is Bertha Blutarski. And understandably so. However, he's a longtime Paris-based journalist who -- and I don't want to reveal too much, here, because I want to honor the man's privacy -- once found his own wallet, stolen several years before, in the tank of a public toilet. That really sums up the Woody experience.

I haven't met Woody, and may never, but we've corresponded, at length, almost daily for two and a half years, and his friendship is invaluable to me. I figure he'd echo my sentiments, but the fact that he says the most appallingly vicious things about me in the newsgroup really says it all.

I'd like to thank Marie Cannon, by the way, for housing the Giants Tweaks Songs and my radio interview on her website, as I'm nearly out of filespace on my own. Even if Marie hadn't offered to help me out like this, I'd always appreciate her outlook and insights on the group, and I'll always remember the vague embarrassment I felt and reading Tom's shameless flirtations directed toward her, but that's another story. Thanks also go to Paul Lujan for offering to help me out with filespace for the older installments. I haven't taken him up on the offer yet, but it's much appreciated. What I'm trying to do is track down a means of getting about, say, 25 megabytes of free webspace for the whole site, as well as an easy URL, like "http://EEEEEE.net" or something. If that ever happens, I'll let you know.

And I really want to give heartfelt thanks to the entire Giants newsgroup for providing material, week after week, even if this is far from the intent of its members. Some of you will write, thanking me for quoting you, but you know? It's my pleasure. It really is. And I appreciate your insights, observations, and humor. You people know who you are -- if I started naming names, I'm afraid I'd hurt the feelings of whomever I inadvertently left out. I'd renew my offer to run whatever you might want to write for EEEEEE! -- but, as you know, you already write for EEEEEE!. The good news is, you don't make a penny less than I do.

Also, I'd like to thank the 30 or so readers on my mailing list, whom I notify upon adding new material to the site. Some of them are newsgroup folks, others aren't -- but just that they care enough to know when there's something new really means a lot to me.

Last year at this time, EEEEEE! boasted around 5,200 access, not counting the times I'd check to see how many people had accessed it. Now that number is over 12,500. It's hardly the volume you might expect to see at, say, the ESPN site, or even the Baseball Prospectus site, but I'm pleased nonetheless. I have some readers to thank -- people who've put links to EEEEEE! on their own websites -- and other sites, such as the Giants' official site, which not only has a link, but even a write-up. I have a way of checking my site accesses, and I see that a number of folks each week see EEEEEE! because of Sarah Johnson, Steven Rubio, Jay Roberts, Jim Furtado, and Albert Yang, among others. Thank you all, very much. (By the way, I'm happy to link to other sites. Unfortunately, sometimes, after people propose reciprocal links, I forget to update my "Links" page. If you're one of those people, please let me know.)

Now I'd like to take a moment to talk about my family. Most of them don't read EEEEEE!, at least not regularly, but that's okay. They've all had to live with me for years, at one time or another; why should they have to read everything I write, too? But Deb, my oldest sister, has been the most avid among my family members, and though, for understandable reasons, she'd had less and less time in her increasingly hectic life to spend combing through EEEEEE!, I still get a kick out of those times when I'd go online and discover 16 e-mails, all from her, all commenting on specific bits from that week's installment.

My wife, Kimberly, and my son, Adam, really don't care about baseball. I can't say I blame them. I dragged my poor wife to countless ballgames, even while we were dating, and the evidence of how much she must've loved me was seen in her uncomplaining endurance of an entire Giants-Padres doubleheader in 1983. She knows how important my writing is to me, however, and has a knack for knowing when to take Adam out of the house for a few precious hours during the day on a weekend, just so I don't have to sit up writing till 4 a.m. Sunday morning, for a change. She's a good sport, and I'm the luckiest husband in the world.

Adam's five. When I was five, I didn't care about baseball either, beyond knowing that the team to root for was the Giants, plus I knew who some of the players were. I didn't sit down with my dad and watch ballgames, though, till I was about nine. If Adam waits that long, or longer, it's okay. If he never develops an interest in sports, that's okay. But I get the biggest kick out of the fact that whenever I ask if he wants to go to a game, he says yes. He puts on a Giants shirt and cap, and makes sure to bring along his orange styrofoam "We're Number One" finger. He never has a particularly good time at the game -- it's a lot to ask a five-year-old to watch the action on the field -- but clearly the idea of "going to the ballgame with Dad" means a lot to him, so it means a lot to me, too.

To sum up, I have lots of people to thank for the continued existence of EEEEEE!, and for a lot of different reasons. You all make EEEEEE! a pleasure to write -- tougher some times than others, but never a chore. EEEEEE! is a creative outlet that I love to have, and which I need to have. You all help make that possible. Thank you.

You dare doubt my orange-and-blackitude? Fie! Fie on thee! Ptoo! Phbbbt!

Gregg Pearlman, gregg@EEEEEEgp.com

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