Comings and goings

Two things to note on the blog front, broadly speaking.

Very glad to see the return of the Nightwriter after nearly three years. He's been otherwise occupied, which he explains well in his triumphant return post, and he will use his old redoubt to chronicle new adventures in the Czech Republic, among other things. I never took his blog off my sidebar, because I've always felt that even his archival material was more valuable than much of what you see on the ol' interwebs. Now, we'll have even more reason to visit. And while we're at it, I also recommend the blog he used to detail his amazing experience with ALS, No Longer I Who Live.

On the not-so-happy front, I've been meaning to lament the end of Grantland, the idiosyncratic sports/entertainment website that Bill Simmons ran as part of the ESPN empire. Big Sports Disney pulled the plug on this enterprise last week. The Grantland venture reminded me of the mostly forgotten The National Sports Daily, a wonderful but short-lived publication that ran its course in the very early 1990s. The link I've posted is a wonderful story about its history that appeared in Grantland in 2011. Of course.

Simmons, like his preceptor Frank Deford, is a difficult fellow and his editoral flights of fancy, like Deford's, made Grantland a continuing headache for the financial backers. Once ESPN ashcanned Simmons earlier this year, it wasn't surprising that his website would eventually get the ax as well. I imagine that some of the talented writers that Simmons assembled, particularly the brilliant baseball writer Jonah Keri, will quickly find other sinecures. I hope so.