If you’ve noticed the latest panel on MLBlogs.com, you can see that we matched a "purty 30" of MLBloggers to the team templates. The idea was to give you not only a different mix of all the Opening Day anticipation but also to show what all 30 team templates look like (other logos available) if you want to start a new MLBlog.

Hunting down the 30 MLBlogs was an enjoyable experience, and it is important to note that those are not in any way represented here as the "best" blogs for those individual teams. That’s subjective, anyway, and we like how every MLBLog is unique in its own way. It was simply in the spirit of fun to show one of each, and we try our best to mix it up so that all MLBloggers get eyeballs. We also may substitute other blogs for particular teams in that panel between now and Mark Buerhle’s first pitch.

Let the season begin. Let the MLB.TV stream. In the meantime, progressive updates:

• Had to remove the Countdown because it was stuck on 2 days and 6 hours. So much for copying View Source javascript. Let’s just say Opening Day is almost here!

• Dan Holmes is with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and writes a great MLBlog called From Cooperstown. Make sure you see his Opening Day retrospective.

• We are very pleased that Scott Reifert’s wife finally started reading one of the most-read blogs on the Internet. Because the season is opening at U.S. Cellular Field, it’s also worth looking at Scott’s post earlier this week about the top White Sox moments from 2005. He got Ozzie, Crede and the whole gang to list their personal favorites just for the MLBlog.

• Just did a Boston radio show for 15-20 minutes (writing this at 8:30 pm ET Friday), and the most interesting question was about which storyline I am most interested to watch now. My answer was, "How can you narrow down 200 to 300 of them?" Just look around MLBLogs and you can see them. What will all those unbelievable Toronto acquisitions lead to? Will we see the old Nomar and will Grady’s new-look Dodgers be this year’s latest surprise story in late October? Is there a better story than Boone Logan, who played Rookie ball last year and just broke camp with the world champs? Will the Braves make it 15 in a row or do the Mets perhaps celebrate a 20th anniversary in style? You can’t begin to narrow it down to one story; it’s the anticipation of the impossible that we love.
• Public shout-out to Arielle at Dispatches from Red Sox Teen Nation for a prize-winning essay that she was kind enough to post on her MLBlog.
• ‘Stros Bro just answered 10 Burning Questions for 2006, and you might want to steal his questions (he stole them first) and post them with your own answers. Braves and Bomber fans probably will like his answers.

20 milestones in the history of Opening Day in Cincinnati:

1. 1876: First Opening Day; no parade, no hoopla, no sold-out crowd
2. 1884: Reds inaugurate new ballpark; portion of stands collapse, injuring dozens
3. 1889: First Opening Day crowd of over 10,000
4. 1895: First “First Pitch” ceremony on Opening Day
5. 1890: First Opening Day parade
6. 1901: Coldest opener on record at 35 degrees
7. 1910: First Opening Day crowd over 20,000
8. 1920: First Appearance by Findlay Market in Opening Day festivities
9. 1923: First Opening Day crowd over 30,000
10. 1924: First broadcast of Opening Day on radio
11. 1948: First televised opener
12. 1959: Last year fans allowed to sit on the field on Opening Day
13. 1966: First night-time home opener, after rain cancels original Opening Day date
14. 1971: First Opening Day crowd over 50,000
15. 1975: Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record
16. 1977: Four inches of snow morning of game; opener starts on time
17. 1996: Umpire John McSherry collapses from fatal heart attack
18. 1998: Earliest Opening Day, March 31; weather throws curve with 80-degree temp
19. 2003: Reds debut new Great American Ball Park on Opening Day
20. 2005: Joe Randa wins it with a walk-off homer, first in Reds Opening Day history

"No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

I watched George Mason University president Alan Merten say that today on C-SPAN, and it occurred to me that it applies to just about everything in life . . . including this MLBLogs community.

Random facts:

Most-Commented Post: Official Astros World Series Guestbook, 741 Comments. If there is another blog out there on the Internet that has drawn more comments, please respond below with a link. A weblog can be used for many things as a form of communication, and in this case we created one so that Astros fans could leave their congratulations for players, and the comments were made visible in the clubhouse.

Most-Commented Blog: Official White Sox World Series Guestbook, 747 Comments. They had the benefit of two posts because we created one more after they swept the Astros. That was 442 posts for the pennant and 305 for the first world championship in 88 years.

(As you’ve noticed, you need to be registered at MLB.com to leave comments on MLBlogs. This was very valuable for fans in that moment of glory and it was very valuable for the Astros and the White Sox. It was trying something new and an example of how MLBlogs make life better. Think about how MLBlogs can work for you.)

Tony La Russa is the first active manager to establish an MLBlog. To those who know the Cardinals’ skipper, it should come as no surprise that he is using this blog as a way to raise awareness of his Animal Rescue Foundation. Hopefully people will spread the word around here about the ARF Blog and help a very worthy cause. By the way, how many MLBloggers have companion animals and what are they doing while you’re blogging here?

Brooks Robinson is eager to hear from you at Brooks Robinson’s Hot Corner with any questions/comments. His MLBlog is primarily geared toward responding to your comments, and he’s been at it for almost all of the last year. It is an incredible opportunity — an exclusive way to ask one of the best players in Major League history whatever you want.

Michael McHugh might be the youngest blogger here, at 14. You might remember Michael as the kid reporter we at MLB.com enlisted to help cover the 2004 All-Star Game festivities in his hometown of Houston. He has remained a part of our world through his MLBlog at Look Who I Just Interviewed! and his work on our MLB.com Kids area. This dude is comfortable talking to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and anyone else in the dugout at Minute Maid. How cool do you think it is to tell your classmates in high school you work for MLB.com?

Elton John’s tour accountant/road band manager just emailed and said to look for his Twins blog to return shortly. DC Parmet is a diehard Twins fan who wears Twinkie gear on the tour whether in Vienna or London or LA. Feel free to leave him comments and ask what life is like on an Elton tour. He said Captain Fantastic is a fantastic baseball fan, too (Braves).

You all are at every corner of the Earth, and Scott Reifert’s latest post in Inside the White Sox bears that out further. MLB President Bob DuPuy’s commenters on Bob’s Classic Chronicles were in Japan, Mexico, Dominican, Korea and basically everywhere the World Baseball Classic was. By the way, those comments left on his blog form one of the pipelines feeding the thinktank for any 2009 modifications, so that’s the place to add your thoughts if you haven’t already.

BaseballGeeks’ latest podcast: 41 minutes, 9 seconds. First MLBlogs podcaster: DA BRONX BOMBERS.

First ballpark-tour MLBLog: Tour of Duty. At least a few others have come along since then, and an MLBlog is the best way to chronicle any kind of multi-park road trip like that.

Most creative use of side panels here: Might be a tie between Bucco Blog and Deep Fried Fish Blog. We don’t want to overlook anyone, though, as there is a lot of imagination out there in using the Six Apart capability at MLBlogs to the fullest. So feel free to leave a comment here with your favorite side panel, most active Typelister, etc.

Know someone famous who should be MLBlogging? Let us know and we’ll help you lasso ‘em.

Start your own MLBlog now >

Our friends down the hallway here at the MLB.com HQ in NY — Mike, Cory and Vinny from the Fantasy 411 show — have a pretty cool new feature for MLBloggers. Their show each Monday and Thursday on MLB.com is interactive so you can email with questions, and they are now saving one email each time and responding to it exclusively on their MLB.com Fantasy 411 blog. If you’re a fantasy owner, these guys are good to know. They also have an ideal Podcast.

As our friend Chef Bob pointed out over at the Deep Fried Fish Blog, it has been quite a first year for MLBlogs. It has been great to watch this baseball-blogging community grow into a big crowd where you get to know each other like those fans who have season tickets around you. Or if you’re the Baseball Collector, where you know all those ushers, security folks and the players who never fail to toss a  ball your way during BP. Having your own MLBlog has gone hand-in-hand with those trips to the yard and watching/listening to your favorite play-by-play announcer.

We decided to create a "community blog" here where it’s easy for you to comment on anything pertaining to MLBlogs. For example, a few people have asked how we decide who goes where in that blue "Look Who’s Blogging Now" panel at MLBlogs.com. It’s not incredibly scientific. You keep starting new blogs, and we try to keep up with you as best we can so you can find bloggers who have at least posted recently. We try our best to shuffle that list each day and give love to everyone, and we especially want to feature the blogs from MLB personnel so that newcomers to this world can see how cool it is to blog right alongside a Tommy Lasorda or a Jorge Cantu. There are a lot more big names on the way, including a hunky TV star who’s a big-time baseball fan and says he plans to start blogging around the start of the season. (We’ll see.)

Click the About page here and there is some more info about this blog.

Speaking of Tommy, it’s worth pointing out here that he started the first-ever MLBlog. The legendary Hall of Famer who bleeds Dodger Blue gets a kick out of his blog and maintains it often. As you’ve probably found, the more you blog, the more likely you are to build a following. Someone like Red Sox Chick gets a lot of comments regularly because she not only is very active in posting but also because (a) her posts are interesting/provocative, and (b) she links out to others and is a good example of how to make your blog viral.

MLBlogs are linked from everywhere around Major League Baseball Advanced Media sites, including the pages of MLB.com (2 billion+ unique visitors in 2005) and all 30 club sites. You can find links in the headline stacks on all 30 club homepages. We want to drive as many baseball fans as possible to this community, so fans can see your MLBlogs and start their own. We also hope you will tell as many friends as possible about this area so they can take the 30-day free trial. Yes, it might be the only place where you pay a little for a blog. But we think it’s worth it to be able to: have this much visibility for your blog (#1 desire for a typical blogger is being read); have the only legal use of official marks and logos for your favorite team or MLB; blog alongside names you recognize within the sport, including MLB.com personalities like Matthew Leach and Jason Beck; keep you generally free of trolls who have no interest in being billed and then being deleted; use what we think is a pretty cool blogging capability from Six Apart.

We’ve done a lot of groundbreaking here at MLBlogs in the last year. Scott Reifert, VP of Communications for the White Sox, started Inside the White Sox early last season and someone really should have published his collection as a book after the team won. He used it as a revolutionary way to "filter out the media" and communicate directly with the fans, and it was a resounding success that drew as many eyeballs on a typical day as a certain Sun-Times columnist with whom he traded jabs publicly. There’s now an Inside the Dodgers blog, a couple of Phillies front office blogs including Baron’s Corner by the dean of all MLB PR directors, which is pretty amazing for those of us who have known Larry Shenk for a long time around the game. The Heckler at Devil Rays games is blogging here and just posted today. Remember the guy who caught the Lance Berkman grand slam ball AND the Chris Burke game-winner in that 18-inning thriller last October at Houston? Yeah, Shaun Dean (right) started a blog on here, too. If you want the best lawn tips in the world from an MLB groundskeeper emeritus, then check out Murray Cook’s Field Blog; what a coup if you have a yard. Part of the fun of MLBlogs is seeing who is going to show up next with a blog.

(This looks like a good one that just joined the crowd tonight.)

MLBlogs are also a great way to promote causes near and dear to you. Tony La Russa uses his ARF Blog to try to help raise awareness of his Animal Rescue Foundation. Orioles Insider and BaseballGeeks want to make you aware of their sites, and Will Carroll of the Baseball Prospectus is not only showing you "the new Will" but also hopefully helping BP sell a few more books. Jack Klugman of "Odd Couple" fame has an MLBlog, and hopefully you also were interested in his new book "Tony and Me" while you were there. Use an MLBlog as a great communications tool to promote yourself if you want. The only thing we watch out for are any links that go to some really bad places, and in the past year only a couple of MLBlogs have had to be obliterated. We’re big believers in free speech and the profanity filter we were given by Six Apart is an occasional headache but for the most part it has been helpful, as we’ve noticed here and there. You can also comment whenever you see something that clearly should not be in that filter, which you would not want to read to your child, by the way. It’s scary to imagine someone sitting there and thinking of every possible verbiage that should be included in the filter.

By the way, in case you’re wondering who those two bloggers are in that small photo at the very top of this post: Brian Anderson and Mark Tremonti. They were a big part of our first year of MLBlogs, too. The former is trying to rebound from the Tommy John Surgery that he detailed in his blog for you, and the latter is the former Creed guitarist (and Johnny Damon’s neighbor) who started his own band Alter Bridge and played the song on the field that led into the last CENTURY 21 Home Run Derby at Comerica Park.

It’s still a new blogging community, and we want to keep growing and improving it. Your constructive comments are always appreciated and we’ll either comment back or email you as often as we’re able. Like you, we have a lot of other job duties, too. Right now, everyone is in Opening Day mode and we’ll catch a few winks sometime in May! But that’s why we created this MLBlogosphere blog. Actually, as you can see from the post below, it was created right after we launched MLBlogs last year. Then the author of this post suddenly remembered today that it already existed, so we might as well start using it.

Enjoy your MLBlogging, gang. We enjoy looking at all of the blogs.

Mark Newman
Enterprise Editor
MLB.com