I joined the ESPN boards back in '99 when I was a pimply faced 16 year old. The first users I remember were rocketpig (Brock), jewscott and Kobs, and I was instantly hooked. And 18 years later, I still have not seen an internet community quite like it. Twins baseball brought us together, but the personalities we brought to the table meshed perfectly. And I think a lot of people who weren't there don't realize was that BYTO was created as a sort of sanctuary from the ESPN boards. BYTO might be seen as the Westworld of baseball forums, but ESPN was far worse. Unless you were doing something illegal, there was virtually nothing stopping you from causing mayhem there. So we wanted to preserve the spirit of the forum without the endless trolling that was interrupting the flow of conversation. Unfortunately, having an almost unfiltered forum even amongst your best e-friends cannot sustain itself forever. So I felt very fortunate that Brock was able to find us a forum with an acceptable compromise of sacrificing some sovereignty in favor of sustainability. But the same time, damn those were some of the best times on the internet. Therapists must love Statfreak. I've never known a person who can overreact to the tiniest thing to go wrong on a baseball diamond. Kobs might be in the top five of funniest people I've ever met over the internet. Dankind was funny until we suddenly realized that the nearly decade long act he was pulling wasn't an act at all. And there was yarnivek, aka manager at Country Kitchen in Winona, who seriously said that he could do a better job of managing the Twins than Ron Gardenhire if he had access to the same information he had.