Thunder Matt's Saloon Turns 10 Years Old

It started with a simple post on April 26, 2006.

Caught the game in Los Angeles where Rafael Furcal maimed Derrek Lee. Thunder Matt entered the game late, I think he ended up with two at-bats. I tried numerous times to get a "THUNDER MATT" chant going, but the LA crowd wasn't having it. That's OK though, cause they all left in the 7th inning.

With that simple paragraph a humble little blog at thundermatt.blogspot.com was born. A silly Cubs blog based on a young outfielder whom we dubbed "Thunder Matt" for no real reason other than we thought it sounded cool. We chose pseudonyms for ourselves. Brant Brown, Chaim Witz, Governor Gray Davis, and for myself, Chip Wesley.

We were never very good at sticking to only blogging about the Cubs. We did however find our niche, which was not really having any niche at all. We just started writing about anything we felt like, and as such set ourselves apart from other Cubs blogs with our weird posts about damn near anything not related to the team. We were the most un-Cub Cubs blog ever, and for whatever reason it worked. And when I say "worked" I merely mean we managed to find a small cult audience that enjoyed us being weird bastards.

As time went on we brought on new writers and in our heyday had nearly a dozen different guys contributing. We quickly got bored and tried new ventures. Remember Pomp Culture? How about Exile on Clark? Or were you one of the four people that read Steve Finley Was Here? As fickle as we were about switching blogs, the Saloon was always our main home. It was Mom and Dad's house we could always move back to when our latest dumb idea didn't pan out, and it usually didn't.

For us blogging was mostly a hobby. And like lots of hobbies, real life can eventually consume your time to do them. So little by little the Saloon died off in 2010. A brief revival in 2012 was exactly that. Brief. This latest iteration has been fun and while I certainly can't write as much as I'd like to, it's good to be back home again, for however long it may be.

Looking back the thing I certainly value most with this whole venture are the friends I've made. This blog and the writers we managed to bring in, allowed me to meet some great people I never would've known otherwise and for that I'm grateful.

Well this is certainly getting sappier than I intended. I assure you I'll be back to my sailor-mouthed cursing self again soon. So here's to Thunder Matt's Saloon. And here's to our original crew. Ted, Ben, Brad, and myself. And to all the guys we added along they way: Nick, Ken, Rich, James, Jon, Jack, Jordi, Adam, Other Ben, Russ, and John. Thank you.