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Answer: The Y!A Baseball forum is a convenient and entertaining venue for asking about, and usually receiving, sound information and opinion about baseball, general or specific, past or present (or future — people ALWAYS want to know which team is going to win the World Series). 

Chipmaker is the MVP of baseball answers. His stats show over 11,000 answers, with 2,300+ being voted the best in the baseball category. With that in mind, let’s find out a little bit more about Chipmaker.

First of all, tell us a little bit about the name “Chipmaker”. You are a baseball guy, do you play some poker on the side as well?

Heh. I enjoy a round of Texas Hold’em as much as anyone, but my ID doesn’t refer to that. I used to work in the semiconductor industry. “Chipmaker” is an on-line handle I coined for myself sometime in the early 1990s (I’ve had an on-line life since before the CE calendar had two 9s in the year).

Alright, so you were in the semiconductor industry, what started your career as a professional baseball answerer on Yahoo! Answers? 

We all have our favorite on-line hangouts. I was a longtime resident of another one, a message board where there could be real back-and-forth (something Y!A is not set up to accommodate easily), and that board had monitors, at least one of which had no sense of humor and a vastly inflated notion of self-importance. I got suspended for a full year — primarily by demonstrating that their policies were idiotic and, by extension, so were the enforcers. So I found another home, Yahoo! Answers’ Baseball forum. It’s a place to share knowledge and love of the great game.

I went back to that other board after the suspension expired, and it was desolate. An energetic forum, gone on the electron wind, due to new corporate ownership, new board software which didn’t work well, and as far as I could tell the same cadre of troglodytes acting as monitors. I gave the place about a week to redeem itself, which it completely failed to do. I’ve never been back since. A strong reminder that, to engage people on the Web, a forum must be functional and embrace intellectual freedom. Remember, the First Amendment has to be used to protect Hustler before it can protect Reader’s Digest.

Professional status would be nice, but I’ve never earned a penny from this. I just love baseball and talkin’ (or writin’) about it.

So we talked about your beginning, do we need to talk about the end? You have announced on your blog that you are retiring. What’s up with that?

Mostly retiring. I need to do other things, is most of it. And, as fun as the Y!AB forum is, I’ve pretty much written all I want to write there. True, there are new baseball fans born every day (both biologically and into baseball fandom), but so many of the same tired, old topics arise, I just cannot find them particularly interesting any more. On the more present front, questions about why one team is so great or why another one sucks are just noisemakers, present no opportunity for insight. Now, those sort of questions belong there and I’m fine with that, but such topics completely fail to engage my interest. (One particularly durable sub-topic is the perpetual Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, presented in all sorts of lights. I’m a Red Sox fan of long standing, but whenever this arises, it’s nearly always about mindless boosterism. Snore. Honestly, what is there to say? “We rule / you suck” isn’t a pathway, it’s a single step, and typically one made by tripping and falling.)

I feel done. But it’s nice to know people care.

Sad to see you go, let’s talk about the records. Right now you hold a pretty commanding lead for Top Answers in the Baseball category. You stand at 2,300 with the closest coming in at 1,594. Do you see your record number of answers ever being broke? (If so, how long do you think it will stay around?)

I certainly hope so. Records are made to be broken. When I first joined Y!AB, the Top Answerer score was 512, and that looked SOOOO far away. Guess I showed ‘em, huh? I will be the first to congratulate whomever surpasses me — and there are a few people in the forum who, if they stay with it, will stand excellent chances of doing so. And falling from the top slot isn’t going to cost me any endorsement deals, of which I currently have zero. (Marketing people! I AM available!)

We won’t let it be broken, if someone breaks it we will protest Yahoo and make sure they put an asterisk beside the persons name.

I thank you for the kind sentiment, but I am no believer in asterisks. Bonds hit 762 home runs without, as far as we know, breaking any baseball rules or regulations while doing it. And that’s fine with me.

So let’s talk some baseball, favorite baseball moment of all time?

Renteria tapping a comebacker to Foulke, 27-October-2004. That was the moment — just prior to the actual out being recorded — that I knew, KNEW the championship was upon us, and could at last exhale the breath I had metaphorically been holding my entire fandom life.

That’s my pure fan moment. Here’s a few others:

Proud to be a baseball fan: Ripken’s circuit of Camden Yards during his 2131st consecutive game played. Just pure, total baseball love.

Disbelief, good: Gibson’s HR off Eckersley, 1988 World Series Game 1. (Watch it sometime. Gibby is completely off-balance, and still knocked it out.)

Disbelief, bad: Little going out to talk to Pedro and leaving him in the game, 2003 ALCS Game 7. Boone’s HR later was simply the ending; I knew the loss was assured when Little didn’t pull Martinez, who clearly was gassed. Man, that hurt.

I love this game because you just do not get this sort of thing in other sports: Lyons sliding into first base, popping up, unbuckling his trousers to scoop out the dirt, and suddenly realizing just what he’s doing and where he’s doing it. Just too funny.

Favorite team (past and current)?

As noted, I am a fan of the Boston Red Sox, have been for over 30 years. A specific team? The 1986 squad, which of course went to the World Series, and had just an amazing season, winning games in all sorts of ways (one night, it was a bases-loaded balk, if I recall). Fun baseball all season long.

Favorite player (past and current)?

Past (and I’m not opposed to a comeback): Roger Clemens.

Present: hard to say. I first played fantasy baseball in 2008, and that has influenced the directions of my baseball attention. So, with a note that I live in central Texas and so also follow the Astros and Rangers, I’ll pick one each — Dustin Pedroia, Josh Hamilton, and Roy Oswalt. Not especially creative selections, I know. And it’s always worth checking the boxes to see what Albert Pujols has been doing.

So before we let you go, being the baseball expert, do you have any words of wisdom, predictions, etc?

Yes I do, that young man I’m holding? First round draft pick, 2023. 

We will be pulling for him. Best of luck with future journeys. Go set some more baseball records!

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