(Jared Carrabis, Mike Ghika)

Jared Carrabis and Mike Ghika (jee-KA) grew up together as childhood friends in Saugus, Massachusetts, just seven miles north of Boston. The two 19-year-olds attended middle school and high school together, and of course played the game they love together through Little League, AAU tournaments, and high school baseball. The two wrapped up high school with strong interests in Journalism upon graduating in 2007. Each now looks ahead to the future in earning college degrees, with Carrabis majoring in Journalism and Ghika in Sport Management and Communications.

Ghika currently attends Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, N.H. He is also a season ticket holder at Fenway, and his sports-first mentality has made it difficult for him to put anything in front of baseball as far as his interests are concerned. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that his past is not the story at hand.

"I've seen everything that [Carrabis] has taken on in his path to building SoxSpace and becoming Governor," Ghika notes. "His dedication to the Red Sox is in his blood, and to do so much and to come so far at such a young age is truly a testament to his character and personality."



When Carrabis was just 16-years-old, he was handed a MySpace account plainly titled "Red Sox." The account had a decently sized platform to work with having just over 2,000 "friends" on it. Jared then went to work on the unoriginal page by adding stats, team history information, photos and various other decorative graphics to the site. After he was satisfied with the transformation of the page, Carrabis dubbed his newly created project "SoxSpace" on January 1, 2006.

The page started out as just a place for Red Sox fans to come and post their thoughts, read stats and look at pictures. But one after another, Red Sox-themed MySpace accounts started to sprout all over the network. Wanting to make SoxSpace different from the other accounts, Carrabis and a fellow Red Sox fan that he had met through the SoxSpace comment board (Jimmy) began posting news clips through bulletins to keep everyone on SoxSpace's friends list up to date. The two posted original blogs and even posted SoxSpace guest blogs. Before the 2007 season got underway, Jimmy transferred to a college in Tampa, Florida and could no longer contribute to SoxSpace, thus opening the door for Carrabis to post solo.

When Carrabis once again became the lone operator of SoxSpace in December of 2006, he took writing blogs from just a hobby to something that he wanted to focus on making it into his career in the future. He began to read the Boston Herald and Boston Globe more closely. Not so much as to what they were saying but as to how the writers were saying it. He turned around and applied the writing skills of best in Boston to how he would create a writing style of his own for the SoxSpace audience to enjoy daily.



At the age of 17, Carrabis began to write his own original pieces and post news clips from the Globe and Herald as Sox fans began to take notice of the increasing popularity of SoxSpace. The page became most useful to Red Sox fans that did not have the luxury of a NESN or a Boston newspaper wherever they lived. Many men and women serving in the United States military began to rely on SoxSpace's original blogs and news updates as their only source of Red Sox information when they had limited time to log onto the Internet. Jared Carrabis never made a dime for his uncountable hours of effort but it was the 'thank you's' he received from those serving this country and protecting our freedom that motivated him daily.

In August 2007, Major League Baseball forced MySpace to delete SoxSpace permanently along with a handful of other baseball fan sites on MySpace.com. The removal of SoxSpace and the other baseball fan sites sent a shock wave through baseball fanatic MySpace users around the world. The SoxSpace readers reacted instantly sending emails to the Red Sox, MLB, MySpace administration, local news outlets, and to anyone else that would help bring SoxSpace back. After 24 hours, the uproar got the attention of the President of MySpace.com, Tom Anderson. Anderson, more famously known as "Tom from MySpace," sent a personal message to Carrabis and informed him that SoxSpace was going to return. After a 48 hour hiatus, SoxSpace was reborn and Carrabis has since made it his home for every single Red Sox blog he has ever written.



Since the creation of SoxSpace, the MySpace account has been viewed over 1.5 million times and has accumulated over 100,000 friends but with the deletion of unused profiles the account sits around 90,000. More importantly, the large audience has helped SoxSpace raise significant funds for the Jimmy Fund and The Lester Project. The SoxSpace audience's votes single handedly propelled Carrabis to a third place finish in the first ever election for President of Red Sox Nation, and in 2008 they voted him into office to become the very first Massachusetts Governor of Red Sox Nation. For all the hours that Carrabis put into keeping Red Sox Nation on their toes with his blogs and news posts, that was their way of patting him on the back and saying "Thank you."

With a great deal of Red Sox fans no longer checking their MySpace accounts and switching over to Facebook, Carrabis teamed up with Sully's Brand to build an official website where Red Sox fans can still read the SoxSpace blogs without having to log onto MySpace. The new page is sharper and more organized, and hopes to be the new home for SoxSpace.

After officially launching SoxSpaceNews.com, Carrabis wanted nothing more than to have one of his closest friends and the biggest baseball fan and the most talented writer that he knew to join the SoxSpace team alongside him. Like clockwork, whenever something major happens in Red Sox Nation, it's a race between the two teens to see who can text the other first to discuss the Sox topic at hand. With the launch, both Carrabis and Ghika rejoin forces to cover their most beloved writing subject, the Boston Red Sox.

So to you: the reader and devoted Red Sox fan, we sincerely hope that you enjoy the new and improved SoxSpace. Welcome to SoxSpaceNews.com!

On Tuesday, May 12, 2009, SoxSpaceNews.com was voted Best Red Sox Blog at the first annual New England Sports Blog Awards.

On Saturday, June 13, 2009, Jared Carrabis appeared on The Baseball Show on behalf of SoxSpaceNews.com.



...then again on Saturday, July 18, 2009.



...and for a third time on August 22, 2009.



Contact Jared: jared.carrabis@gmail.com