As many of you will have noticed, I have written three or four posts on Slugger O’Toole in the past three months. This does not mean that I have taken the Slugger O’Toole Shilling or gone over to the Dark Side.

Far from it. I am not part of the Slugger “Team”. I am not a “moderator”. In fact I have blocked so many Slugger “commenters” (sic) and moderators that I could not bring myself to read what they say out of some sense of Duty.

The posts written for Slugger were I think specific to that site and I needed an outlet as much of what I write is an attempt at “Nostalgia”.

But importantly I am not part of the Slugger agenda that they say that they dont have. Writing for Slugger makes me feel like Tom Driberg, the Labour MP (and probably spy for USSR) who wrote for and was tolerated by right-wing Beaverbrook Newspapers.

This Blog “the Czar” is amateur and amateurish. I don’t even use Spell Check and I have no idea what most of the apps, functions and tools on this site do.

This is a FREE WORDPRESS platform. It is so good that I have never been tempted to use the premium version. I highly recommend WORDPRESS. So all this costs me nothing.

Slugger is of course a professional message board. The dynamic is much different. It rightly provides a source of income. And this means that it has to raise revenue.

Although I have contributed to Slugger funds at Slugger events, probably no more than £15-£20 over a total of eight years, I have never been tempted to press the “donate” button on the Slugger site.

There are two ways of looking at this. One is that I am a free-loading parasite. The second interpretation is that donating to Slugger would feel like buying access and a sense of entitlement. I suppose that both are true.

One thing for sure. Contributing posts to Slugger O’Toole will never buy me the respect of some of the key people on the site. I will always be an outsider.

No, I have not taken the Slugger Shilling. At worst, I have taken the Slugger Sixpence.