Fire Quinito was named Best Sports Blog at tonight’s Philippine Blog Awards. It’s a thrill receiving the honor from last year’s winner, the excellent running blog The Bull Runner.

In these cases, I’m usually inclined to go on and on about my own personal genius, but I had been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” which argues that success always has context, and the little success that this blog has had over its short six-month life is owed to a lot of people. My friends, especially those on Facebook, and readers of my old blogs really helped get things started. I’ve also had the good fortune of being able to get feedback very early on about this blog from people like Howie Severino (check out the comments on the first few posts) and Ed Lingao, although I don’t know how much they would want to associate themselves with this blog, really.

I was also encouraged by kind words from friends and personalities from the sports community: Jude Turcuato, Tim Starks, James Ty III, Rafe Bartholomew, Patricia Hizon, Charlie Cuna, Boyet Sison, TJ Manotoc, Johan Uichico, Fidel Mangonon, Rey Joble, Chris Soler, Mike Yu, Toff Rada and whoever else I forgot at the moment.

Thanks to everyone who read, commented, subscribed, followed, tweeted, and re-tweeted.

I am especially proud of the award because it’s not just for this blog, but for the burgeoning online sport blogging community that's passionate and features new voices and new ideas, people who see through the BS and write about angles that the traditional sports media miss or are too lazy to write about -- Basketball Exchange, hoops.blink.ph, Patay ang Butiki, Driball, and many others. This is for all of us.

It’s an exciting time to be a sports fan and a sports blogger, and if we keep this up, maybe we won’t need Quinito anymore.

After the jump, winner pictures.