Amazing Race: Thank You, Steve Smith

There's a function through Google AdSense where I can get reports on how many "page impressions" my blog gets. A page impression is a view on a page of my blog where one of the Google ads appears. I don't get millions of hits. Let's face it, I'm not exactly famous. The count generally runs from the teens to, on a decent day, upwards of 40.

I happened to look at it today. A week ago Sunday (March 28) I had 75 hits, and this past Sunday and Monday I had 160 and 98, respectively. To say I was shocked is an understatement! So I did a little checking.

You may have noticed a Feedjit box on my page -- the box that shows the live traffic feed. It shows the location of people arriving on my page and what site they came from, and if they go to a specific post of mine. If you click on this link you can see an expanded version of that box, with a little more information, including the search terms entered into Google that led to my site. For example: "Fullerton, California arrived from google.com on "The Joe In Philly Experience!: My Trip To Southland" by searching for tnt southland."

I looked down the list. Apparently many people have been doing searches on Steve Smith, the former Phillies third-base coach who, with his daughter Allie, was just eliminated from "The Amazing Race."
On March 28, when Steve and Allie took the lead, he mentioned being a professional baseball coach and that the Race experience was "as close as you can get to being in a World Series." This week, after being eliminated, he mentioned that he had a World Series ring but the time spent traveling around the world with his daughter "jumped ahead of it."

These two remarks on the show apparently got people wondering who this guy was, finally: "steve amazing race phillies," "steve smith phillies coach," "what team does steve from amazing race coach for" and "amazing race steve world series rings" are some of the search terms listed on my Feedjit page.

The bio at the CBS website says about Steve, "Current Occupation: Professional Baseball Coach (Cleveland Indians), World Series Champion Coach (2008 Philadelphia Phillies)." But he never really mentioned it on the show prior to the last two weeks, and in the early going Steve and Allie weren't getting much time on screen, so it's understandable that not many people really knew about it. As any regular readers may recall, I not only broke the news locally after the cast was announced (see the first post in the list below) but contacted the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News about it when the show began and they still hadn't even mentioned it (third post below).

So, I am deeply indebted to Steve for bringing my site some increased traffic. And if any new readers are looking at this, welcome! I hope you'll stick around! Here are links to my previous Amazing Race posts:

Ex-Phils Coach Steve Smith On Amazing Race
Amazing Race: Good Start For Ex-Phils Coach
Amazing Race: Smith Still In There (Plus: I'm Famous)
Amazing Race: Smiths Surge
Amazing Race: Steve Smith Is A Homer...Homer Simpson
Amazing Race: Still All Good For Steve Smith
Amazing Race: Champagne Misses And Duct Tape Dreams
Amazing Race: Oh, My Gravy!
Amazing Race: Better Than A World Series Ring?

One thing I've noticed is that my Race posts have gotten longer and more thorough the last couple of weeks. Part of that, I think, is because as teams have been eliminated, it's easier to follow the progression of the remaining contestants, and not focus quite so much on Steve. Now, of course, I have no choice. It's also in part because there are teams I like (the cowboys -- oh, my gravy!) and teams I don't (Team Moron).