Back in May, we asked KC Star columnist Joe Posnanski why he hadn’t expanded his reach to have his delightful storytelling at a second home, since that’s what most columnists were doing. “As for massive national fame and bank accounts and all that, I hope that I don’t sound insincere when I say I really don’t want all that. I’m pretty happy with my life.”

And then Sports Illustrated came calling. (Small, trivial aside: We’re old school like that, too. If SI hadn’t come calling, we might still be anonymous.) Posnanski announced on his blog this morning that his blog will be reprinted on SI.com, and he’ll write a weekly column for the site.

That’s why I’m really excited about the big blog news that I’ve been teasing for the last few weeks. Starting next week, Sportsllustrated.com — si.com, for short — will be reprinting this blog. Don’t even ask how that happened. And, even more thrilling, starting next week I will write one column a week for the Sports Illustrated dot-com — I believe it will appear on Wednesdays.

There are any number of cool things about this. For one, this blog should not change at all. SI just wants to reprint it. Also, I’m still writing columns for The Kansas City Star, which has been home and family for a dozen years now. And finally, I will be writing for Sports Illustrated, which is where it all began for me. I know that the world keeps changing, and these days there are brilliant and hilarious and all-heart writers at ESPN and Fox and CBS Sportsline and Yahoo! and all these other other places that have only gotten into the sportswriting game in the last few years. I have great friends at all those places. There’s something in my own heart for Sports Illustrated. Today, I saw the Great Wall of China. Next week, I start writing for Sports Illustrated. It’s beyond my imagination.

A) do you think the KC Star is kicking itself, wondering ‘man, why didn’t we just have Joe blogging for us?’

B) Is having Posnanski at SI.com sort of like the Denver Post having Woody Paige on Around the Horn, in that the papers think, ‘we’ll be exposed to some new readers by giving our columnists national exposure?’ Sorry, we now have to wash our mouth out with soap for putting those two names in the same sentence.

C) Will this set off a trend? Will major metro columnists, instead of blogging for their own paper, put their own random thoughts on a blog to highlight and develop their creativity and storytelling?

Ben Folds and the Big Blog News (Joe Posnanski)