What Would You Say … I Do Here?

It takes a big man – and I’m speaking in terms of metaphors, not junk size – to admit when he needs help. You see, I’ll be taking a trip tomorrow to the very small town of Suring, WI for a family reunion. How small of a town is Suring, WI? Well, the image below is a recent one of the downtown area of Suring, WI.

I’m not worried about the town in and of itself, however. I’m worried more about the fact that a large portion of my family (father’s side) will be occupying this town at one time. Moreover, I’m worried about conversing with this group of people. Not to go all Doc Hollywood on you, but I live a different life than most of my kin. My day consists of things like public transit, sidewalks, smartphones, and black people. These are things to which my brethren are not very accustomed.

Though it may sound as if I’m making value judgments, I am not. I am merely trying to set the scene for what I will be dealing with tomorrow. I haven’t seen many of these people since my wedding and some even prior to that. As with any meeting of long lost family, there will be the normal barrage of questions pertaining to my life, of what it consists, and what I’m doing with it. My wife will not be joining me, though my parents should be able to vouch for her existence. I can talk about my home and my dogs, which will be just fine, but the conversation will eventually turn to my occupation. My day job, as it were, is fairly easy to explain. I fix computer systems for an insurance company. Boom. However, my parents will undoubtedly bring up my other venture, baseball writing, much of which appears on this very site. This is where the wicket gets sticky.

To most of my relatives, saying I write about baseball on the Internet sounds completely made up. I may as well say I am an underground astronaut or a unicorn rancher. Despite my numerous requests, I have still not received my NotGraphs business cards, so providing proof will be difficult. Assuming we can get past that, another set of questions will arise:

“Do you get to travel with a team?”
“What’s a clubhouse like?”
“Have you met Ted Williams?”

This is where I need help. I need to try and explain my position here at NotGraphs to a group of people unfamiliar with things like GIFs, Twitter, advanced statistics, blogs, irony, and the Internet in general. Since I am in a bit of a drought right now in the way of friends and positive influences, I turn to you, fair NotGraphs reader.

You’d be doing me a huge solid if you could provide a succinct, one-sentence answer explaining NotGraphs that can be understood by a more, let’s say rural, audience. Some of you will attempt to be clever (and will most certainly fail), but I know there are some out there who can assist me in my conundrum.

Help me, baseball nerds. You’re my only hope.