The Meaning of Milestones

This will be a different post then those of you are used to here at the point after. This one isn't about sports (at least not directly), and it's not an opinion piece either. It's more along the lines of a thank you letter. Ive been with The Point After for a little under a year now, and I've posted numerous articles about baseball, about football, about statistics and how to act as fan but more importantly as a human being during a heated rivalry.

From the time I started, there have been a couple of Milestones reached in all areas of sports and the world, some good, some bad. Eugenio Velez went an entire season without getting a hit. Good for him. Mariano Rivera reached 600 saves. An incredible feat to one of the games greatest relief pitchers. These are the achievements that history will remember and use to compare the game's best.

But why these numbers? Why is 500 home runs the dividing line between the game's best sluggers and merely a legitimate homerun threat? If a player has 499 homeruns, is he perceived differently then if he had hit just one more homerun over his career? Milestones, everybody. They are infinitely important and terribly inconsequential. They tend to legitimize one's efforts as something tangible, something real that one can hold out to the world and say "Look at me, I did this, and I got this far!"

Here at The Point After we are approaching 20,000 page views in our 1 year of existence. We are so close that I'm guessing we will go over it when you read this post. 20,000 page views in a year isn't much in terms of the internet, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. It's an arbitrary number no doubt. Why didn't we celebrate 19,000? Who knows. But this milestone of 20,000 page views not only shows us where we are headed, but where we have been.

It's been a fantastic journey so far, we're up to 15 writers in 15 different cities. I suppose the next big milestone is our own domain name. That's a big deal, and maybe we'll celebrate that one too.

Again, this is a thank you letter. Big thanks to Brendan and Sagar for creating the blog and allowing me to write for it. To the other writers who share their opinions and stories with all of us. But most importantly, to you the readers. We as writers love to know that people are reading our work. So when you read an article you like, or don't like, or makes you angry, or makes you fall asleep, let us know. That's what makes us better.

On to the next milestone, everyone.