Thanks From the Other QBC Guy

Hi Everyone

You know me as “the other guy” besides Keith who runs the QBC.  Other than tweets, I generally don’t post publicly but given the last 2 weeks I wanted to put a few words down.

For me the QBC started as a lark, a fun side project I could do with my buddy Shannon and this Keith guy I had never met.  That first year we had no idea what kind of response we would get.  All we knew was that we had Ronnie Darling, Ed Kranepool, Mr. Met, and a dunk tank (ok, not the best idea).  Well, several hundred of you showed up, we got coverage in the local papers, and even SNY showed an interest in us.  Seemed we had tapped into something.

Over the next few years Shannon dropped out and Keith and I became partners and good friends.  Along the way we brought in over a dozen players, held many many panels, had SNY as a sponsor, was covered by Sports Illustrated and Deadspin, hosted Mets executives, and sold a few thousand tickets.  Most importantly, we never lost sight of our motto – “for the fans, by fans.” 

The QBC stopped being a lark and became a labor of love.  Would we have liked to have made money?  Of course.  Did we?  Honestly, not to get into details but not really.  Money was never our goal with the QBC.  We really tried to keep prices as low as we could to make sure as many average, real fans could attend and experience meeting guys like Strawberry, Backman, Nimmo, etc.  I think most people understood that too.

And then this past year happened.  Last year’s QBC was the biggest and best yet.  Then Yahoo tried to sneak in and take our acronym.  We invoked out trademark and fought them off.  Next, the Mets announced they were finally going to run a FanFest (which we had been telling them to do for almost 10 years). They wanted to partner with us, then they didn’t.  We tried to coexist but realistically it was too much.

So now the Mets have a successful FanFest.  I really hope they understand what they have and make this the first of many years.  I don’t begrudge them, tho I do wish they had involved Keith and I, but so be it.  The fans won and that was always our goal.

When we started the QBC I was living outside Philadelphia, my daughter was 3 and my son was a week from being born.  She is now 9, he just turned 6, and we now live outside Boston.  A lot has changed in the last 7 years but the one thing that has remained constant was the passion of the fans who attended the QBC. 

It’s those fans I will miss the most.  Over the years this annual event was a chance to see people like us, people that bleed orange and blue.  I’d recognize faces from year to year, and people came to know me.  We were a Mets family.

So what now?  As Keith has said, the QBC is not dead.  We have put way too much of our heart and soul (and money) into this just to let it die.  What form it will take, we still have to decide.  But we will be around somehow.

For now I want to thank you for supporting us the last 7 years.  Without you, the QBC would have never taken off.

Thanks also to all those who have supported us, from our vendors, our advertisers, SNY, and yes even the Mets, who probably could have shut us down year 1 if they really wanted to. 

I also want to thank all of our amazing volunteers who over the years have become friends.  As I told you guys recently, the QBC was the one time each year I was guaranteed to see you, and I will miss that.

Most of all though I want to thank my partner in all of this, Keith.  I had no idea who he was when we started, but over the years we’ve become Irish brothers in this venture. 

It’s been a fun ride and I look forward to the next chapter.

See you all then

Dan