It’s a New Ballgame

You observe a lot by watching – Yogi Berra

Back in 1983, the year the first InsuranceTimes rolled off the presses, Jim Rice, Jerry Remy and Dennis Eckersley were among the key players for the Boston Red Sox, a mediocre team with a potent offense but not much pitching. The Red Sox finished 20 games behind the division leader that season.

Since then, the Boston Red Sox teams, while failing of course to ever win the World Series, have at least been competitive and entertaining. They have actually won the division several times in the past two decades, only to later lose in the playoffs.

The failure of the 1983 Red Sox to win the World Series was in keeping with a 100 year tradition of the team: insufficient quality pitching. The Red Sox have had some superb arms over the years, including Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez, but never enough of them at the same time to go all the way.

This history helps explain why Boston fans are even more excited than usual over this winter’s Hot Stove League activity. The team has acquired All Star pitchers Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke, both from West Coast teams. When Schilling is added to the starting rotation of Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe and Tim Wakefield and when Foulke joins fellow bullpen artists Mike Timlin and Scott Williamson, the Red Sox will have as much depth in pitching as any team in the major leagues to go along with their highly-productive offense in 2004. The team’s owners appear intent on becoming the best, sooner rather than later.

In addition to their lack of pitching, the Red Sox in their history have also been consistent in their ability to fill their ballpark with paying customers. Even in sub-par seasons, with rising ticket prices, the team’s loyal fans have continued to jam tiny Fenway Park.

At InsuranceTimes over the past 20 years, we have strived to assemble the right mix of advertising support and editorial coverage. Some seasons have been better than others but, like the Red Sox, we succeeded in always being competitive and were rewarded with a loyal fan base in New England and, in recent years, a growing audience from New York.

We have regularly scouted for ways to make InsuranceTimes better. When we learned early this winter that the country’s best regional insurance publication, Insurance Journal, was expanding from its base in the West into our region, we were intrigued. We knew they had a quality team but wondered if they could use some depth in the East. This could be our chance to play with the likes of a Schilling and Foulke—in fact, with a whole roster of All-Stars. We could give our Northeast fans the best trade publication they have ever had now, not sometime in the future.

So with this issue, InsuranceTimes joins the Wells Publishing and Insurance Journal team. We are proud and excited to become part of this fast-growing network of quality print and electronic publications.

As Insurance Journal East, we’ll be sharing space with fans of the Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Pirates and Orioles—even perhaps the new Virginia Senators (if the Montreal Expos ever move). Along with covering the six New England states, the East edition will also serve an Atlantic region that includes New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. They will all benefit from our combined resources and experience.

We owe our 20 years of success with InsuranceTimes to our loyal fans—our advertisers and readers. Hundreds of excess brokers, insurance companies, independent agents, employment specialists, education providers and others trusted us with their advertising dollars while thousands of readers came to depend on InsuranceTimes for their industry news.

We are grateful to you—our readers and advertisers—for your support these past 20 years and we are equally determined to earn your continued support now that we are Insurance Journal East.

Twenty years after they performed at Fenway Park, Remy, Rice and Eckersley are building on their baseball experience to become television commentators. Remy is more successful now as a Red Sox play-by-play master than he ever was as a player.

At InsuranceTimes, we’re ready to build on our past success and work with our new teammates to provide the New England and Atlantic states with the best trade publication ever.

From our office a block from Fenway Park, we can see the snow atop the Green Monster but it feels like springtime. We know the time has come, we can feel it in our bones, we’ve got the best team in the business: this is the year.

Andrew G. Simpson Jr. joins the Wells Publishing team as vice president for the East. He can be reached by e-mail at asimpson@insurancejournal.com.