Time For A Change

To the person who commented yesterday that the change that TigerBlog had mentioned earlier this week had "an April Fool's vibe" to it, that was laugh out loud funny.

Nope. It's a real change. In fact, here it is:

If you're reading this after mid-morning Eastern time, then you can (hopefully) notice the redesign of the goprincetontigers.com website. Hopefully you like it. 

The website goprincetontigers.com debuted on Oct. 23, 1999. Since that rather simple beginning, this is the seventh iteration in design.

The most recent redesign was back on Oct. 1, 2014. From that day until today, the website has had the look that everyone has long since gotten used to seeing.

What did it look like last time? 

Does that look familiar? That was the look from 2004-2014.

Clearly, these redesigns don't happen all that often.

One of the major differences this time around is that the goprincetontigers.com site will be the place to find TigerBlog every morning. That is big.

TigerBlog has been posted on this site, which is housed by blogspot.com, since it was first created back in 2008. The idea was to use the blog as a supplement to the information on goprincetontigers.com, so that the larger website would be less crowded.

The first post, in fact, was on Aug. 28, 2008, and it mentioned the upcoming media day at the "new" Roberts Stadium. The entire post was one paragraph.

From that beginning, the blog evolved to being used for in-game updating, but that proved impractical for two reasons. First, there were live stats for that. Second, it was impossible to do this for every sport.

As TB has written before, the first few months of the blog saw little to no readership. It wasn't until it started in its present format as a daily column that it began to catch on. That was in 2009, when he figured that to build and maintain the audience, he'd have to do this every day. 

And so he has. There has not been one missed workday since he first started sharing it this way in January 2009. There have been a small handful of special weekend entries, including during the recent NCAA basketball tournament runs by the Princeton men and women.

Since then, TB has been fortunate that three different Directors of Athletics have seen the value in something that is a bit informal by college athletic standards. The result has been a product that has been very well-received, one that has provided TB with a daily challenge to be creative.

Through 3,767 posts and more than 2,000,000 page views, the blog has been here on blogspot. 

Starting tomorrow, you'll find it on goprincetontigers.com.

Actually, you'll still find it on blogspot for at least a little while. TB isn't sure what the best way to do this, since he doesn't want anyone to get lost in the transition.

The new location will have its own dropdown menu, where you'll still be able to access the blogspot archives going back to 2008. It'll also have all of the entries that will now be posted directly to the website available under a "posts" tab.

And that's the change that TB mentioned earlier this week. 

Hey, life is about evolving. For instance, this is how Princeton's baseball team used to power its pitching machine:

1897, mathematics instructor Charles Hinton designed gunpowder-powered baseball pitching machine for Princeton University baseball team's practice. One source claimed it caused several injuries, may have been in part responsible for Hinton's dismissal from Princeton that year. pic.twitter.com/exri7AOUER

— Jim Koenigsberger (@Jimfrombaseball) March 28, 2023

Ol' Charles was a bit out there. He was an Oxford-educated mathematician and science fiction writer, in addition to his invention — not to mention a firm believer in the fourth dimension and a convicted bigamist. He came to Princeton in 1893, four years before his pitching machine. From the Daily Princetonian:

Actually the mechanical pitcher was a muzzle-loading cannon which used a powder charge to propel the baseball. The barrel of the gun was approximately five feet in length and was mounted on a braced platform. As first designed, the mechine was fired from behind the pitchet's mound, usually by Mr. Hinton himself who would measure out the powder charges and trip the firing key without giving the batter more than a few seconds notice. Then around 1898, Mr. Hinton designed a treadle located in the batters box which allowed the hitter to fire the gun whenever he was ready. 

Bill Clarke, the longtime Princeton coach for whom Clarke field is named, is quoted as saying the machine wasn't really all that valuable as a teaching tool and that it was "hazardous" for the batter.

As such, the machine didn't last long with the baseball team. Also from the Prince:

While the gun had only a short life with the baseball team, it was frequently resurrected from its storage place in Mr. Hinton's bathtub and used in demonstrations. To prove that it could really fire a curve ball, the inventor placed a number of paper screens between the muzzle and home plate. The holes made in the screens by the ball would not line up if the gun was adjusted for a curve. When the novelty of the gun wore thin for Princetonians, the owner began renting it to carnivals and concessionaires, who offered handsome prizes for the first young man to hit the bullet-like pitches of the machine. Just where the Hinton gun is today is anybody's guess.

See? Where else can you get stuff like that but from TigerBlog. 

Now you'll just have to reset your bookmarks. The content will still be the same.