{"id":31912,"date":"2018-01-02T07:44:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T15:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=31912"},"modified":"2018-01-03T13:11:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T21:11:28","slug":"20th-anniversary-of-fastpitch-west-1998-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=31912","title":{"rendered":"20th Anniversary of Fastpitch West (1998-2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As we welcome the New Year, for 2018, we here at FastpitchWest.com\u00a0 celebrate our 20th anniversary.\u00a0 Hard to believe it’s been that long.\u00a0 The internet was a different place back then — no Facebook (2004), no Twitter (2006).<\/p>\n

At the start, Fastpitch West was little more than a bulletin board of postings.\u00a0 But it grew quickly, thanks to all of you.\u00a0 \u00a0I confess that in 1998, I wasn’t really planning to start a fastpitch website.\u00a0 I had a website for my law firm and was posting of results from local games here in Southern California.\u00a0 Players and fans seemed to like that and starting sending information on their games and upcoming events.\u00a0 I liked it because instead of chasing down information on games, they were showing up in my email inbox.\u00a0 \u00a0More and more, until I realized that there was a thirst for information and coverage of the game, and the rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n

I had been an avid reader of Ray Anderson’s “Fastpitch Bulletin” and Bob Tomlinson’s “Fastpitch Chronicle”, and missed the regular coverage of fastpitch when they stopped publishing their hard copy publications.<\/p>\n

My friend Larry Fisher of the ISC and I used to trade letters, and later emails about the game.\u00a0 His letters often ended with the question “What’s going on out west ?”\u00a0 \u00a0This website became the answer to his question, and his question, the genesis of this website’s name.<\/p>\n

The scores, information and more kept coming in, and we kept sharing them with you.\u00a0 When time permitted, “the Editor” wrote some original content, and shared his thoughts with you.\u00a0 Friendships grew from those emails, with luminaries like Al Doran (“Al’s Fastball”) and Bob Otto (“Otto’s Pitch”), and others who were kind enough to share their content with our readers.<\/p>\n

The “West” grew, to coverage further and further east, north, south, and beyond, to include hotbeds of the game like New Zealand, Australia and Argentina.\u00a0 And Fastpitch West grew, along with it.\u00a0 As editor, I had the honor to meet and make friends with players and fans around the world, who visited and shared with the readers of FastpitchWest.com.\u00a0\u00a0Maddy “arrived” in 2002, and “MaddysPhotos” quickly became one of the most popular features of Fastpitch West.\u00a0 Her photos helped us open the window to the game wider.\u00a0 The advent of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter now permit everyone share information and photos, and as a result, coverage of the game we all love has grown exponentially.<\/p>\n

Sittting in the Editor’s chair for Fastpitchwest.com for the past 19 years, now heading into 20, has been a great privilege.\u00a0 My thanks to all of you for your readership and support.\u00a0 The friendships that Fastpitch West has afforded me will last a lifetime.<\/p>\n

-Jim Flanagan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we welcome the New Year, for 2018, we here at FastpitchWest.com\u00a0 celebrate our 20th anniversary.\u00a0 Hard to believe it’s been that long.\u00a0 The internet was a different place back then — no Facebook (2004), no Twitter (2006). At the start, Fastpitch West was little more than a bulletin board of postings.\u00a0 But it grew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,8,20,25],"tags":[370,844,845],"class_list":{"0":"post-31912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fastpitchwest","8":"category-featured","9":"category-general","10":"category-so-cal","11":"category-websites","12":"tag-fastpitchwest","13":"tag-fpw20th","14":"tag-so-cal-fastball","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31912"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31917,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31912\/revisions\/31917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}