MySpace a place for friends

Meanwhile, at a popular Phillies forum, the regular cast of characters was watching the game closely. The poster known as "1" started a thread titled "The OFFICIAL Cole Hamels is here to save the franchise THREAD".

Many responses were posted to the original "Fact" given by "jeff, esq." Contributing authors such as "Woody", "DS", "jemagee", "seke2", "phatj", "JayBallz", continued the thread. By the fourth page of the thread (Friday), "1" had proposed a web site (much like his previous success story, the ChrisWheelerGlossary.com) to compile and showcase the best Cole Hamels Facts. By the next day (Saturday), "1" had purchased the domain. By Sunday, the site was born.

Cole didn't last long in AAA. He was called up to the Phillies after only three starts. By the middle of May, Cole made his first Major League start and colehamelsfacts.com was averaging 5,000+ views a day. It quickly became the top result in Google when searching for information about Cole.

By the time Cole was scheduled to make his third Major League start, colehamelsfacts.com was mentioned in the New York Times. Since then, it has been featured on comcastsportsnet.com, wikipedia.org, yahoosports.com, 610 WIP, the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Scranton Times-Tribune, The TriCounty Record, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and too many blogs and email forwards to mention. A few Facts were used by John Anderson on the May 17th, 2007 edition of ESPN's SportsCenter. Even Cole himself has experienced the site saying, "I think it's great; It brings a lot of joy and laughter to many people!"