Several readers, at least one and a half of you, have noticed the lack of writing in this space lately and asked after me.

Because, like a lot of things in this business, it's shutting down. But this isn't a sad story. These are exciting times

Thanks. I'm fine.

I have decided to end this column. I'd hoped to write about one of my favorite events, the first two days of the NCAA Tournament, publish an interview with Allen Barra about his Yogi Berra bio, then quietly fade away, happy on my ice floe. But I guess it's not going to happen that way. You're an inquisitive bunch.

I wanted to be quiet about it because while I enjoyed and appreciated the lovefest that followed my announcement late last year that this column would be switching from daily to part-time, I don't need another one and didn't want to look like I was fishing for one.

I'm also not in need of condolences over my career. As I mentioned last fall, Salon asked me in the wake of the financial crash to switch gears and take on some editing duties while continuing to write the column whenever I could. I said I'd try that, though I didn't think I'd like the column-writing part of it.

The daily format, with several updates a day, was this column's skeleton, something without which I believed it wouldn't thrive. I think I was right.

Meanwhile we here at Salon have been, like our colleagues everywhere, trying to figure out the future of this racket and how we fit into it. What is journalism going to look like a year from now, two years, five years, as the newspaper industry collapses, the technology continues to evolve and new business models are developed?

I've been asked to help try to figure all that stuff out for Salon. It's fascinating and exciting. While some of you are picturing me chained to a desk, slogging through copy, bitterly recalling my glory days as a columnist, I've been over here in what feels like the hippest seminar in grad school: big ideas, great conversation and no tests or grades.

Just, you know, we all lose our jobs if we don't get it right. And also, the chains aren't so uncomfortable.

Seriously, though, these are exciting times. I have a lot of friends in the newspaper business and to them I think these days feel apocalyptic. But, while my eyes are wide open about all the jobs that are being lost and I'm sensitive to the suffering of good people in my line of work, these days are feeling to me like a thrilling time of new beginnings and possibilities. I can't wait to see how it all turns out, even if it turns out that there won't be a place for me in the new world.

But I think there will be. And I haven't retired as a writer. You'll see my byline pop up in Salon from time to time and I have a few other writing projects I'm percolating on that you'll hear about if you're interested and you have a rudimentary ability to find people on the Web who want you to find them.

Until then, thanks for reading, and feel free to send me any brilliant Web 3.0 ideas you have lying around.

Allen Barra says a case can be made that 83-year-old Yogi Berra was the greatest catcher in baseball history. And no ex-ballplayer is more famous today, not even Willie Mays.

But a few years ago, fresh off a book about Bear Bryant, Barra noticed that there hadn't been a definitive bio of Yogi. He set out to fix that, and the result is the new "Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee."

Yogi's best known to younger generations as a lovable lunkhead, the idiot savant who talks to a duck on an insurance commercial, who said, "It ain't over till it's over" and "You can observe a lot by watching." Then there are the malapropisms that make a weird kind of sense when you think about them: When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Half this game is 90 percent mental. I didn't really say everything I said.

But, as Barra points out, Yogi's been a success at almost everything he ever tried. Pitchers who were brilliant when he was behind the plate never did anything much when he wasn't. Whitey Ford, one of the greatest left-handers ever, often says he never shook off one of Berra's signs, and Don Larsen has said the same thing about his World Series perfect game.

» Continued

» Continued

» Continued

Tracy Ringolsby is a Hall of Fame baseball writer, honored in Cooperstown in 2005 with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. But late last month he was just one of about 200 editorial employees thrown out of work in Denver when the Rocky Mountain News closed.

While much of the newspaper's staff launched IWantMyRocky.com to continue covering Denver and Colorado as the Rocky had done in print for almost 150 years, Ringolsby and two colleagues started a blog called Inside the Rockies. Columnist Bernie Lincicome wrestled with the idea of becoming a blogger at I Want My Rocky, but Ringolsby and fellow baseball writer Jack Etkin dived right into continuing their coverage of Denver's major league baseball team.

Ringolsby was at spring training in Arizona when the closing of the paper was announced. He told the Denver alternative weekly Westword that the Rocky's parent company, Scripps, immediately cut off all corporate credit cards and he had to pay his own way to his home just outside Cheyenne, Wyo.

» Continued

It's the thick of fantasy draft season and I've put a team together that could win any league. In fact, I think it could win the World Baseball Classic, which begins Thursday in Tokyo.

If only I could get my team to show up. Not likely: It's the WBC All-Withdrawal team. Check out this retiring first string:

1B Albert Pujols
2B Placido Polanco
SS Rafael Furcal
3B Evan Longoria
OF Vernon Wells
OF Grady Sizemore
OF Ryan Ludwick
DH Aramis Ramirez
 C Joe Mauer
SP Johan Santana, Carlos Zambrano, Francisco Liriano, Rich Harden, Scott Kazmir
RP Jonathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan, B.J. Ryan

» Continued

We seem to have a little trend going in the field of sports history. For all I know it reflects a broader movement in letters, but I don't get out much so I don't know. But it's clearly in vogue to identify a single ballgame and claim that the rush of history pivoted upon it. Or at least that the game in question was, without question, the greatest game ever.

Until it's time to write the next book, I guess.

So just in the last week or so the mail has brought "When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball," Seth Davis' book about the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird NCAA title matchup in 1979, and a new paperback edition of "The Best Game Ever: Pirates 10, Yankees 9: October 13, 1960," Jim Reisler's tome about the World Series Game 7 that ended on Bill Mazeroski's home run.

» Continued

Welcome, movie fans, to the world of television sports fandom.

I've been reading the letters section of Heather Havrilesky's Oscars recap and it seems the commenters are up in arms about the hyperactive camera work during Sunday night's tribute to filmmakers who died in 2008.

In case you got tired of watching previous winners toss verbal air-kisses at the nominees in the major acting categories and tuned out, the usual series of clips and still photos of the departed flashed in sequence on a giant screen onstage, but rather than showing that montage to we great unwashed, the Oscars producers treated us to a swooping, diving camera zooming in and out on the actual onstage screen.

» Continued

We're never going to get a truth commission and general amnesty on steroids, but Alex Rodriguez gave us a little peek at what such a thing might have looked like Tuesday at his nationally televised press conference.

The New York Yankees slugger apologized for his drug use, which he said was limited to the 2001-03 seasons, when he played for the Texas Rangers. News that he tested positive on what was supposed to be an anonymous drug test in 2004 was reported by Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated last week.

A-Rod kept using the unfortunate phrase "I'm here to take my medicine" as he apologized for his steroid use, blaming it on his being "young and stupid," another oft-repeated line.

» Continued

They say we're young and we don't know ...

OK, campers, rise and shine. It's the second annual Brett Favre Retirement Day and you don't want to miss a minute of it.

The great quarterback has told the New York Jets that he's retiring after his 18th season in the NFL, same thing he did after his 17th season. Brett Favre retires more often than a narcoleptic mattress tester, so rather than write a whole new postmortem, I'm just going to point you to last year's version.

Let's see: Joke, transcended the game, people not believing he's really retiring, the Streak, lovable everyman image, annual diva routine, might change his mind but it looks like this is really it.

Yup, still good.

See you in a few weeks, Brett.