Voices from the Bleachers; A Sports Blog Volume One

Voices from the Bleachers; A Sports Blog Volume One is the culmination of what transpired after Brian Hayes suggested that he and I start a sports blog back in 2015. I hemmed and hawed, and it took two more years before me and our cousin Ahmed Boyd started 'Voices from the Bleachers.' Brian joined us, followed by a few other writers, most of whom were our cousins. From 2017 until mid-2019, we averaged three or four sports blogs a week, but just as with other facets of life, it became harder to sustain that output as we each had other things on our plate. Life comes at you pretty fast, right?

As my own burgeoning career as a writer began to take off, not only could I not contribute as much, I needed to hire a personal assistant to help manage all of the things I had going on. We were joined shortly thereafter by my cousin, author Byron Woulard, and my bowling league compatriot Raymond C. Robinson, my cousins Tasha Morris my PA, and Chondra Collette Jones. My cousins Weston White, Sr., Jerome Pittman as well as Anthony Parnell Jones and Jailyn Lumpkin all contributed to the efforts. Wouldn't it be cool if we were able to one day create a business of our own? It was just a daydream, but daydreams do become realities.

Brian Hayes made a suggestion that our sports blog didn't necessarily have to talk only of sports, because after all, the people in the bleachers are observers of all facets of life. He didn't realize it, and of course, I didn't tell him, but his outlook dovetailed perfectly with an idea that Tasha and I had been nurturing along.

With my successes in the publishing world, and Tasha's ability to pretty much conquer anything she set her mind to do, we fiddled with the idea of writing scripts and filming short movies. We had the material and the will, just needed the know-how. We researched, came up with a plan, and we named our supposed company 'Binamu Productions,' because Binamu means cousin in Swahili. We purchased our logo, and we were ready to set forth and make our mark…Aand here we are. Voices from the Bleachers; A Sports Blog is our offering to the world of a time in recent past when sports was an experience and not just spectated from afar. 

Marlon S. Hayes