Awesome.

The same year I began attending SABR conventions, so did THT Founding Father Aaron Gleeman. Though his weights have had their ups and down over the years, he’s always been a big guy. This bottomed out in early March of last year, when, at 28, he weighed 355 pounds.

He started a diet and exercise regimen, quitting crap food, counting his calories, and working out virtually everyday. As he’s noted on his own blog, the results have been a huge success.

Gleeman, who stands slightly over six feet, checked into SABR weighing about 166 pounds. That’s impressive.

The amount of weight he’s lost is enough for a person. In fact, if you took the weight he lost and created a new person out of it the same height as Gleeman, that person would be borderline overweight by BMI.

So yeah, Gleeman looks a lot better. He says he feels much better and has a lot more energy. And he is eating—it’s not like he’s starving himself. He’s just been really consistent in doing all the right things for months on end. It’s gone from being a diet to just how he eats. He notes that in the future he’ll have to shift more toward building up muscle instead of sweating off calories when he works out, but for now he’s a helluva success story. Kudos to him for pulling it off.

So Gleeman is in the best shape of his life?

Best shape of his life?

Dammit, just beat.

He lost about 190 pounds in a little over a year. That is amazing!

There were some nice bars and restaurants, most notably a rooftop bar with lawn bowling.

Brit's Pub. Great spot.

if a prospect has 35 innings pitched in 35 appearances, the manager and pitching coach will both find themselves in hot water

Thanks for that insight. The Twins like to make their reliever prospects start for a few years in order to help them develop as pitchers. It's really hard to develop as a minor league reliever getting 40 innings a year.

I enjoyed the whole Gleeman story until I got to the part where he weighs less than me (I've been trying to get from 175 to 170 for about 2 months)

Brits was very fun. We were there from 7pm to closing Sat. night.

Aaron needs to fill out a bit if he is ever going to hit for power.

I thought the presentations this year were the best in awhile. It may have just been a function of better choices on my part but I enjoyed all but one and that was a function of some annoying sound problems which meant the speaker had to speak without the microphone while the sound of feedback filled the room.

The official scorers panel was a lot of fun and Terry Ryan could not have been more entertaining. He was endearingly gruff.

Gleeman's weight loss story is pretty amazing, and must have been a lot more difficult than he's giving himself credit for. I can't even imagine living on 1,250 calories a day, even with a much less active lifestyle, and I weigh less than half of what Gleeman did when he started his diet.

One thing I left out of the Brit's Pub place. We got there around seven and found two empty tables that we could pull together for us. We felt so happy to have two full empty tables out in the sun like that. Me? My eyes are sensitive to bright light, so I made sure the sun was to my back.

Turns out, the sun was a little too bright for everyone. It began when Joe Dimino began holding the menu up just to block the sun's rays. The other guys sitting that direction - Anthony Giacalone, AJM, Will Young - razzed him a bit for it. Then they started mocking/imitating him by doing it, too.

Then they realized - hey, it's suddenly like 10 degrees warmer when we do it. And that damn sun is in our faces all the time. Suddenly, they weren't mocking Joe by holding up the menus to their faces - it had become a requirement.

Oh, so that's why those tables out in the sun were all unoccupied.

Fortunately, fate intervened. The guys facing the sun looked around for a place in the shade, and while there wasn't any at that moment - five mintues later a British guy got up with his crowd and we took his spot. And there was much rejoicing. Will Young was still screwed - he was on the edge of the sun & shade line, but he said don't worry - in 10 minutes he'd be all in shade. And so he was.

Hmmm - -that's a good story. I really should've put it in.

(If anyone cares, the eight guys there were AJM, Giacalone, Dimino, Will Young, Gleeman, Sean Forman, deJesus freak, Steve Treder & myself. Later that night Mike Webber showed up, and later still Kyle the Whiffle Ball Fanatic, and Jack Moore).

Damn...I guess I picked the wrong night to go out!

Wow, Gleeman is kind of cute.

Heck, during a lull in the Twins-Royals game this year, Mets fan Anthony Milazzo took out his cell phone to start watching his Mets play their game.

Unfortunately the signal in the stadium sucked so the game kept freezing on me and I gave up after a few minutes. Next time I have to bring my earbuds so I can at least listen to the radio broadcast.