Thanks For Writing, Pete

You can probably trace it back to the winter before the 1920 season.  You know, when Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees?  That's probably where it started. That was the beginning of a long and nasty rivalry, even if the participants didn't know it at the time.  The Yankees bought Ruth for a song, a purchase of Louisianic proportions, and the fates of two franchises changed forever. Since the advent of free agency, the Red Sox have tried to exact their revenge, but no no avail.  The Yankees and their deep pockets continued to pilfer players from their New England rivals.  Sparky Lyle. Luis Tiant.  Wade Boggs.  Roger Clemens.  Johnny Damon. The Red Sox have never gotten a player of much consequence away from the pinstripes.  Jim Leyritz?  David Cone?  Ramiro Mendoza?  David Wells? This one, though.  This one hurts.  Boston has finally gotten it's revenge. Peter Abraham, Yankee beat reporter for The Journal News and godfather to the modern sports beat blog, is leaving his New York post and sailing for dirtier waters at The Boston Globe to cover the Red Sox.  For Pete, it's the career move of all career moves, a shift that a reporter has to make to further himself. For the rest of us, there will be a huge hole left where Pete's coverage once resided. It's hard to believe now, but back in 2006 when Pete first started his Yankee blog, no other reporter had fully established themselves in that realm.  Pete changed all that, using his blog to spur conversation, share anecdotes from the locker room that had no place in articles, and openly conversing with a rabid Yankee fan base that spent more time reading and arguing than they probably should. His blog did the rarest of things: it created a community, a neighborhood connected by a sports team that would influence many more around the web.  He occasionally would bring that community to the forefront by inviting independent bloggers not affiliated with the media to write for a day in the off-season, giving them exposure they would be hard pressed to receive anywhere else. Pete got it.  He knew what it meant to be a fan and what he would look for from his local newspaper and he gave it to us. That's why it's a shame we're losing Pete's voice on the Yankee landscape.  When a player leaves, you might miss them for a bit but eventually their production is replaced.  As much as we may feel connected to certain players, we don't know who they are.  We don't have a personal connection to them. Pete has been our window into that world, the guy who pulls you aside and whispers a funny story, giving you a little more insight into these silent people we watch play a game on TV everyday.  He was our eyes and ears into a world that most of us will never see and he was damn good at his job. You've done us all a great service, Pete.  You deserve the outpouring of appreciation you've received since your announcement yesterday.  I think everyone knows you will have nothing but success in Boston. Thanks.