I had never made a website as a joke before. And while I was never against the idea, I couldn’t have guessed that the thing that drove me to do it would be something as strange as Blaseball.

On Sunday, October 11, 2020, I launched a website called www.Crabcheck.site. This was a spur of the moment decision, driven by a month of falling deeper into a bizarre and fascinating world known as Internet League Blaseball. Simple and singularly purposed, this website does one thing: tell you if Crabs Good or Crabs Bad. That’s it. So what’s so significant about it?

It’s special because it marks itself as a gleaming example of how a weird internet gimmick managed to take me away from my own world and drop me into its own. It’s a digital plaque that reads “Here is when Branden fully succumb to the appeals of Blaseball.” And this article you’re reading now is the informational pamphlet that explains what the hell I’m talking about and how it got me to this point.

“What is Blaseball?”

That was the question I was asking myself for about four weeks. I kept hearing about it on social media. But whenever I did, it was in out-of-context posts and comments. I had the assumption that it was some kind of sport, but I had no idea why people were interested in it. I would brush these posts off, confident that if it’s worth knowing more about, that information would come to me from the grapevine. Then a week passed, and another, and the talking continued while my knowledge of the game remained in the dark. It wasn’t until the death of a blaseball player named Boyfriend Monreal did I finally break and decide to look up for myself whatever the hell blaseball is.

In the most simple of terms, blaseball is a virtual browser game based on America’s favorite pastime. Players log into their accounts at www.blaseball.com and they can see tickers displaying the latest game information. It is set apart from normal sports in two distinct ways, however. 

The first is that it all happens in near hyper speed. Each game takes about 25 minutes to run through, simulating stikes, swings, homeruns, and everything else you’d expect, giving real time updates via the tickers. Each real world hour is one blaseball “day,” with 100 days to a season. This means that starting Monday morning, each blaseball season runs until Friday evening. They then host the championship offseason on Saturday, with a day off for voting Sunday.

The second distinction is that the rules are both tremendously fictional, and regularly changing. Each season, players can spend gold that they earn from participating in fan activities – like betting and idolizing players – on voting tickets. These tickets can be redeemed for new rules and bizarre effects that will be applied the following seasons thereout. These range from rule changes, like certain teams having to run an extra base to reach home, to unique items that protect the players from being incinerated on the field by a rogue umpire. The more seasons that happen, the more these oddities stack onto each other.

This was the first strike for me.

It had the familiar structure and format as real world baseball, a sport I do enjoy.  It got rid of the lengthy duration of real world games and added an extra dosage of wildness to keep me interested. So after perusing the teams, I chose to become a fan of the Baltimore Crabs. I enjoyed watching the virtual ticker update with the latest actions. I enjoyed seeing strange names like Adalberto Tosser throwing a strikeout against Charleston Shoe Thieves batter Blood Hamburger. It was even more fun seeing players use grappling hooks to catch fly balls and zapping away strikes from the record with the electrical blood.

But I had entered the game late. By the time I had actually tuned in, we were on season 7. A great deal of things had happened in the previous seasons. And without the context of being there to see it, I was left with questions. Why are some players encased in giant peanut shells? What’s the deal with the swarms of crows? Why does someone named Jaylen Hotdogfingers have a refinanced debt with something called the microphone? With no clear answers on the main site, I decided to look through the blaseball wiki for more information.  

The Blaseball Metaverse

While I didn’t find everything I wanted to know, I did find far more than I expected to. I learned that the reason there is a team called the Unlimited Tacos was because they were originally the Los Angeles Tacos, which experienced a “a Grand Slam so powerful, it broke spacetime and let the team steal an entire game.” This tear led to the city of LA being separated infinitely. With unlimited LAs, the team had to change their name.

I also learned that Hotdogfingers is important because they were incinerated by an umpire. But by voting for the blessing that steals the 14th most idolized player, fans of the game managed to “steal” the player out of death and back into the game. This prompted the pitcher to be the only player capable of hitting batters with the ball, inflicting a variety of dangerous side effects. It was implied that she did this as a way to pay off her life debt.

It goes deeper, too. Almost every player in the game has their own personalities, oddities, and backgrounds. Each team had lore and culture that was being cultivated by their real world communities. Forrest Best wasn’t a normal man, but a wooden mannequin with large crab legs protruding from their back. Axel Trololol was a pitcher, but also a literal car with a glove tied to one of their front wheels. Oliver Notarobot is part man and part machine with a degree in Blaseball Studies. Tillman Henderson had nothing strange about them, but they were a generally rude, unpleasant, and an all around hated individual. The Seattle Garages are all musicians in a band, a real band. I’m not kidding, here’s their Bandcamp page.

And that was Strike Two.

Now blaseball had evolved. It was no longer a quirky browser game, but a surprisingly lore-rich universe that fans like me would get to experience in real time. And when things were calm, I could dive deeper into the ocean of history that this month-old game had already established.

They Do it For The Fans

From the new rules that they vote for, to the backstories they create for new players, it seemed like the fans were an integral component to the development of blaseball. But who were they? This entire time, I was learning and discovering the world of blaseball on my own, save for a friend or two I told about it in the process. It had been a very independent connection between me and the game. I felt that if I wanted to get the closest experience, I’d need to find these people.

The first steps were simple: I followed the Blaseball Commissioner on Twitter. They gave up to date information about significant events in the game. I also followed the Baltimore Crabs Twitter account. I don’t know who runs it, but they were humorous and referential in a way that I understood. Then I followed the Blaseball Subreddit. It didn’t seem very active but it had fan art and other content. Finally, I joined the official Blaseball Discord server and registered as a Crabs fan therein, granting me access to the Crab exclusive channels. It didn’t take long before I was joining in watch parties and cheering alongside others.

Strike three: I’m out.

The final strike was joining in the community proper and now I was being sent into the bullpen among the others. Whether I meant to or not, I had become a part of the Crabs community. A small part, but a part all the same. When exciting things happened, I made sure that I could be alongside other fans, sharing in the revelry of the game. I understood the trends, the cheers, and the memes. Then one day, I had a clever idea. It was an idea that only a Crabs fan would really enjoy, and I excitedly got to work making it real. 

Next thing I knew, I had created Crabcheck.site and started sharing it around. It was a little dumb, completely unnecessary, and immediately loved by other Crabs fans. But it was more than just for internet praise. I was proud of myself for finding a creative and entertaining way to contribute to a community that I enjoyed.

So my hard shelled hat comes off to you The Game Band (the developers behind Blaseball). You managed to create a tremendously unique experience, one that captivated me and led me to my own carcinisation. I had a great deal of fun getting to this point and I greatly look forward to whatever strange thing happens next.

Crabs Ascension, maybe?