Since today is my first anniversary of moving from St. Louis to work in our MLBAM New York offices, a little Big Apple flavor here from the MLBlogosphere.

Spent a long, long, long day at Yankee Stadium today. It began in Joe Torre’s daily briefing in the Bomber dugout, on a beautiful sunny day. The subject was raised about what a microscope Randy Johnson is under, and this was before Big Unit’s start. Joe said this about Yankee fans:

"They’re there to pick you up when you need it, and they’re there to remind you that they’re there."

That was a great quote. Then he said, "they pay you money to come out and let you know how they feel."

So now I am looking at Yankees Chick’s post ("getting the win doesn’t count") and am reminded about what happened in the hours following what Joe said. When I was reading the Yankee game notes (which you can get at Press Pass), I noticed that Johnson entered the game having won 11 consecutive decisions at Yankee Stadium. That was the longest such streak by a Yankee since David Cone in the 1990s. Just then, I heard the boos begin. And they continued when, after the Yankees had given him a 9-5 lead, he walked the bases full and then gave up an RBI single.

So the Yankees’ ace proceeded to do one better than Cone by winning his 12th consecutive decision at home, in front of those Yankee fans, and he was booed. It’s just amazing to someone who moved here from St. Louis and spent most games at Busch Stadium. Just utterly, truly amazing. I’ll leave right or wrong to other people — it’s just night-and-day different. That’s life here, just as it was when Carlos Beltran was booed during his slow start, and I don’t know how the practice began, and it’s something that Joe Torre said before the game that you simply expect and even accept, because fans remind you that they’re there.

People are passionate in different ways. And at MLBlogs, people are passionate in their posts.

It will be amazing to see the Red Sox and Yankees posts side-by-side here Monday and Tuesday as Johnny comes marching home.

Welcome Andrea Mallis back to the MLBlogosphere. She posted under the blog heading of Planetary Pitch in 2005 and her blog has been restored and glad to see her Baseball Astrology back here. She has been featured in largescale media and definitely has an interesting perspective.

Chef Bob at Deep Fried Fish Blog has offered some tips to help you with blog bling.

It was a tough day today for the Blue Jays at Babe’s House, but Steve Mitchell, proprietor of Diehard Jays Fan, is having a good weekend. He was the MLBlogger of the Week on MLB Radio’s "Under the Lights" show Friday night, and he talked about the team and also rated some of the best and worst of the 23 stadiums he has visited. Click here to listen to Steve.

You also can find that link as well as that of previous guests in the drop-down menu under the MULTIMEDIA heading on the MLBlogs.com homepage. We’ll be snagging a different blogger each week for the Friday night show, a chance to promote your blog and talk baseball in front of a huge baseball audience. Another reason why your blog belongs in the big leagues . . .

So, is Kevin Mench in your AL outfield now that the Monster.com All-Star Online Ballot has just been released at MLB.com? The Rangers’ red-hot slugger just went deep for the seventh consecutive game, meaning he is one away from the Major League record shared by Dale Long, Don Mattingly and Ken Griffey Jr. Mench is the only right-handed hitter ever to do it in seven straight.

‘Stros Bro included the fellow Texan in his First Vote — blog about your 25 alloted online votes as you go along the next couple of months.

Elsewhere around the MLBlogosphere tonight:

Steve Mitchell at Diehard Jays Fan was the guest MLBlogger of the Week tonight on our "Under the Lights" show on MLB Radio. Look for the link to his appearance soon in the Multimedia section of the MLBlogs.com homepage. Speak right up if you’d like to be a guest on the show on upcoming Friday nights — a great way for you to get the word out about your MLBlog and talk some baseball.

Big night for MLBlogger David Wright — two dingers in a Mets win in Atlanta. Is he your NL third baseman on that online ballot? That should be a great race the next couple of months. Morgan Ensberg, Scott Rolen, Aramis Ramirez, and some potential surprises there like Edwin Encarnacion and Garret Atkins of the division-leading Reds and Rockies, respectively.

From deep in the hole has a nice series running on his Angels blog about his favorite Halos of all-time. Nice idea for an MLBlog.

Feel free to blog about the NFL Draft this weekend. Hey, we’re all sports fans. Amazing move by the Texans tonight.

Take a look at Casey Stern’s latest post on Sterno Speaks. It was a big first week for our new weekday show called MLB.com Midday. Can personally attest here that Ty Wigginton is a better dart thrower than Rays teammate Joey Gathright, both of whom were in our studios. But Gathright still had one of the plays of the week when he brought back that homer from over the wall at Yankee Stadium.

Here are some Recently Updated Photo Albums. Take a look and follow their link at the top to that person’s blog . . .

• Cubs vs. Marlins 4/25/06
• Cubs Vs. Marlins – April 24 2006
• Found Nemo
• blog
• PlayingInThePast
• 2006 Season
• 4/23 Astros vs Pirates

Currently listening to: Kirk Gibson’s 1988 Miracle Homer.

The race is on. You get 25 votes in the 2006 Monster.com All-Star Game Online Ballot, and who is going to be the first to blog about their first vote? Miggy (above) wants you, and so does Jeter and all the rest. What position is toughest this year? AL catcher is the vote here. My story has some breakdown of the choices by position. This is one of the best times of year, and MLBlogs makes it more interesting because you can share your reasoning for your picks online and out at the ballpark! Let the debates rage between now and the Monster.com All-Star Final Vote, and we’ll give you regular voting updates at MLB.com along the way.

Mostly to show you a tip on how to best display your choices, I cast my own first of 25 online votes (and I’ll punch ‘em at the park, too). My votes always flow along with the subsequent two months, so some of these are hot early and some are just personal favorites.

‘Stros Bro has the right idea. Take a look at his First Vote. You can do that 25 times with your MLBlog, and then as announcement time approaches, you will be able to look back through your posts and have a chronicle of every time you voted. Some enterprising MLBloggers probably will even record the ballpark ballots they punched.

Please leave a comment here if you’ve done the same thing ‘Stros Bro just did. The big picture on the homepage at MLBlogs.com is now pointing to his post. Will be happy to point it to your First Vote as well for the whole MLBlogosphere to see. After you submit your online ballot, just do an Alt-PrtSc if you have a PC and then in Photoshop crop out the above part of your voting results page. Easiest way to show it.

Vote wisely, NL fans. This is the 10th anniversary of the last time the senior circuit won the event. It’s been payback for that run the NL had all those years with Garvey, Carter, Rose & Co. And that means the AL has had home-field advantage in the last three World Series, with the last two years proving valuable during sweeps by the Red Sox and then White Sox. It definitely matters.

Mark

Currently listening to: Hammerin’ Hank’s 715th

Now that you have started an MLBlog that is accessible to at least 2 billion+ unique visitors per year around MLB.com and 30 club sites, there are some guerilla ways that you can bring people to your baseball page here. This is a list of 10 examples to keep in mind:

1. After you blog, post a brief comment right here under the most recent MLBlogosphere post, summarizing the topic you’ve just covered so others will check it out. Include your URL under your name. Don’t be bashful about doing it constantly. That’s one of the reasons this blog is generally at the start of the Active Roster on the MLBlogs homepage, to serve as a guide among other things.

2. Comment frequently on other MLBlogs, especially to welcome rookies to The Show, and again include the URL so there’s always a link to your page.

3. Create a Typelist with your favorite MLBlogs, and they probably will do the same. See an example on Rob’s Ramblings or Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes.

4. Be profiled here as a Spheroid by emailing your responses to the nine questions (or any other questions you prefer) that you see in previous Spheroid features.

5. That big promotional space on MLBlogs.com is changed multiple times each day, and alert us (same email above) with anything special you might be blogging. It’s meant to showcase both MLB personality blogs as well as fan blogs, and we’re always looking for especially interesting topics. Advance notice always helps. Red Sox Chick and Rays from across the Pond told us they were going to do a live blog between their teams last week and that was promoted on that homepage mediawall during and after. And here’s an idea: That main image is 466 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall, and maybe you can create a dazzling graphic of your own choosing that you think we would want to display there, accompanying it with text showcasing your blog and others. If that interests you, the email address above is where to send it…no guarantees but it might be fun.

6. Create a Photo Album. As you can see from the post below, occasionally we’re showing Recently Updated Photo Albums. Gradually some features on the MLBlogs homepage will change, but for now in version 1.0 that’s another gateway for visitors. Remember that if you create a Photo Album like Tommy Lasorda and ‘Stros Bro did, you then have to activate it for public view by going to Weblogs–>Edit Design–>Content and then selecting the choice and saving.

7. Post frequently. The more you show up in Recently Updated Weblogs, the more you are seen on the MLBlogs homepage and in the side panel of most MLBlogs.

8. Be a phone-in guest on Friday night’s "Under the Lights" show on MLB Radio. Carl Shimkin of Inside Pitch was last week’s MLBlogger of the Week, and you can listen to his appearance by clicking on the link under MULTIMEDIA on the MLBlogs homepage. You may be approached by the show’s producer, but feel free to suggest yourself as a guest. That MLBlogger of the Week will be highlighted in advance and after the show here as well.

9. Be viral outside the MLBlogosphere. Email all of your friends and family with your URL. Look at Bleeding Pinstripes: Everyone’s part of the crowd.

10. Play third base for the Mets.

These are just some of the ways, and feel free to leave your own suggestions here for other traffic tips for your fellow MLBloggers (right after you post those comments highlighting your newest must-see posting). Ask some savvy house bloggers like Bob at Deep Fried Fish Blog and Jake at Bucco Blog, and sample their techniques. Use the Subscribe and Syndicate features on the side panels. Have fun and we will keep trying to point people your way by continually mixing up that MLBLOGS ACTIVE ROSTER list on the homepage and gradually enhancing the area. Welcome to the daily flow of newcomers and here’s to lots of baseballs and lots of eyeballs.

Currently listening to: Pete Rose’s 4,192nd hit

• blog
• PlayingInThePast
• 2006 Season
• 4/23 Astros vs Pirates
• April 23, 2006 Kid’s Day, Sox vs. Twins
• Harbor Park
• Maddog at the stadium
• Photos of Zack
• Angels 2002 ALCS
• Ring Day

Zack, Carl and Reid were asking about the subject of storage allotment on MLBlogs. We at Major League Baseball Advanced Media partnered with Six Apart, the leading blog software company, to create these MLBlogs and they host them and provide the software you use. Your friendly neighborhood MLBlogospherologist consulted with management at their Typepad group in San Francisco, and we’re happy to report that it’s a non-issue. To quote: "We do monitor storage now on MLBlogs, but we don’t enforce the limits. So I wouldn’t worry." There you go.

Another recurrent question, which sometimes comes to this desk via our MLB clubs, is: How can I leave a comment without it showing my email address? Many people obviously are familiar with our Fan Forum message boards, where they post under usernames. There is no such option here if you aren’t an MLBlogger. You have to be registered at MLB.com to be able to leave a comment on an MLBlog, but you need an MLBlog if you want it to just show your name instead of email address. We want you to be an MLBlogger, not just an MLBlog Commenter. No one has coined the term "Commentosphere" for a good reason.

(Naturally, I had to Google that fact and be proven otherwise.)

Speaking of questions, John at The King’s Game has a good one for you all on his latest post. Hopefully there will be a consensus opinion there . . . just another case of blog evolution.

Nice new post here by Steve Stewart, the Reds’ radio broadcaster alongside Hall of Famer Marty Brennaman. Cincinnati has to be one of the surprise stories of the first month, and glad to have this Bad Boy Blog ‘s inside perspective throughout the season. Great chance for you to get him your question/comment.

You are cordially invited to get everything out of your system over the next few days that has nothing to do with All-Star voting, because the drumbeat can be heard approaching closer and closer. It will be the perfect blog topic, a post for every 25 online votes over the next couple of months and raging arguments among voters causing us to stop just short of declaring marshal mlblogoslaw here. More to come shortly…

Some good blogging about the anniversary of Rick Monday’s flag rescue. Examples: Bruce Markusen | Rays from across the Pond. Speaking of the Rays, we had Ty Wigginton in the MLB.com Studios down the hallway here a few hours ago for fellow MLBlogger Casey Stern’s new MLB.com Midday show. If you haven’t watched it yet, please take a look at 12:30 pm each weekday on MLB.com — it’s good stuff, and each show ends with a fun dart-throwing competition. Wigginton just passed teammate Joey Gathright, who was in here yesterday.

Is there anything better than a brand-new MLBlog that starts with the two words: "Bull Durham"?

MLBloggers are back on MLB Radio, as the series resumed Friday night with a live appearance by Carl "The Cabbie" Shimkin of the Inside Pitch blog. MLBloggers are featured on the "Under the Lights show" on those nights, talking about baseball, blogging and a little of whatever. Just click on the drop-down menu under "Multimedia" on the MLBlogs.com homepage to see who’s been on, and don’t be surprised if someone from MLB Radio invites you on the air this season.

Click here to listen to Carl!

Found this Memory Company Chicago Cubs Note Pad that is just made today for Rob’s Ramblings.

Casey Stern blogged about the new MLB.com Midday show that he will be hosting each day starting at 12:30 p.m. ET on Monday. Please watch the show as a great lunchtime (for people out East, anyway) break, and then join Casey on his blog Sterno Speaks to get regular inside info on the show. Among the scheduled guests for the first week in our MLB.com studios in New York will be MLBlogger Jorge Cantu, so we’ll be sure to pass along how much fans are digging his MLBlog.

There’s an MLBlogs connection now to virtually everything we put onto the MLB.com show lineup, from Fantasy 411 to MLB.com Midday to Stayin’ Hot to Under the Lights (which interviews MLBloggers on Friday nights). If you haven’t noticed it yet on the MLB.com homepage, there’s something else very special coming Monday. Watch the Fantasy 411 show at 11:30 a.m. ET, and you will see country star Trace Adkins introduce his new baseball song called "Swing." MLB.com is the only place where you can hear it first (click that link and listen to a clip now), and hope a bunch of you will check it out and blog your thoughts.

Gabriel’s "Memoirs of the Little League" is now in its fifth part over at DA BRONX BOMBERS
and some good reading that will hit home with a lot of us who can still
remember putting on that first uniform, smelling the leather and hating
rainouts more than anything in life. Also make sure you take a look at
his welcome graphic for new MLBlogger MC Hammer.

Hammer wanted to see more pitches for Barry Bonds to hit, and the fan behind The Yankees From One Mile High
saw first-hand as Bonds deposited it over the left field wall at Coors
Field for No. 709. What if everyone who went to a Major League ballpark
blogged about it after it was over? That would be something like 75
million MLBlogs postings this season, and that doesn’t include playoffs.

It must be time for spring cleaning.

Another good MLBlogging tip from Reid at Baseball is Heaven’s gift to Mortals, for those who use Firefox.

It’s amazing what things you can find via MLBlogs. So recent Spheroid My Life as a Tribe Fan included a link  to Fark.com, and there you could find a Yahoo! News article about the letter "W" entering the mainstream of Swedish language. That’s a good thing now that the White Sox are MLB defending champs and all. There was also an interesting San Diego Union-Trib story there about clubhouse managers who collect bobbleheads.

Please feel free to comment here with some of the most interesting you things you have seen around the MLBlogosphere today . . .