Thomas Vana of Chicago White Sox Fan Message Board…The White Sox Guy will be our MLBlogger of the Week at 10:20 ET tonight on MLB Radio’s "Under the Lights" show. You can find the link to the show on the MLB.com homepage tonight or go to that MLB Radio page, and later it will be archived along with all of our previous MLBloggers of the Week in the Multimedia section of the MLBlogs.com homepage. Speaking of that page, this week we added the Browse by Team drop-down above the Rookies…and then we seemed to add a whole lot of Rookies — great news.

I wrote this story about Nate Robertson’s new MLBlog. The Tigers’ left-hander had a great appearance on Stayin’ Hot with Seth Everett and Darryl Hamilton this week, and we found out he likes the original Big League Chew best. Same here. Congrats, by the way, to Seth & Bone for their 500th Stayin’ Hot show on MLB.com. Feel free to leave them comments on their blog, which supports their popular 3-5 pm ET weekday show.

Have a great and long Fourth of July weekend, everyone.

Just did a Baltimore radio show via phone to talk about All-Star voting as time ticks down to tonight’s midnight deadline. The host is appalled at the fact it is predominantly Yankees and Red Sox, couldn’t believe that Big Papi is leading because "he has fallen off this year," and asked me why this is happening. For one thing, the Yanks and Sox have finished 1-2 in the AL East every year since 1998, they have horses, so although it’s not my job to endorse them one way or the other, I would not call it an abomination in sports. Every time I see Ortiz he is winning a game in the last inning, just as every time I see Mauer swing a bat he is reaching base. But more to the point, yes, many fans around baseball have this reaction. It’s been that way ever since the first weekly voting update was released here. So here was my point when the host asked me if this is a popularity contest:

I have heard the cliche words "popularity contest" since I was a kid. This is 2006. It’s a TECHNOLOGY CONTEST. More ballots are cast online than at the ballpark, and add them together and you have a massive, unmatched ASG campaign. Let’s face it. Baltimore: You want Tejada in the starting lineup at PNC instead of Jeter? Go to MLB.com now. Click All-Star ballot. Check boxes. Submit. Do it again 24 times. And that’s just one email registration. Are there more Yankee and Red Sox fans? Maybe there are. There sure are if you look at the MLBlogs population here. It’s the players doing their job on the field, but it’s also technology, and right now it’s definitely technology. Making up 400,000 votes on the last day is doable if everyone in a market makes smoke come out of our website today…just as getting a Jeter to Top Vote-Getter is possible on the last day. It’s either time for a correction or time for a blowout. Depends on who uses the mouse.

Don’t complain about a popularity contest. That’s so 1970s. It’s a technology contest, and there were more than 2.3 million ballots cast on the final day last year. So go vote if you think something needs to be corrected. That’s why we raised the total votes allowed from one to a ******** 25. And that’s why the guy sitting next to my desk here came up with the idea to have a Final Vote five years ago. No more he-was-snubbed. Vote. Vote often. Everyone can get to a computer, even if it’s going to the local library. You want to make a difference? Vote now!

There are now less than six hours left.

And memo to Baltimore: One could definitely imagine a Ramon Hernandez winding up among your five Final Vote choices on Sunday night. Who knows. That will be up to Ozzie.

THOUGHTS, my fellow MLBloggers and All-Star voters?

The deadline to vote for the All-Star startersis 11:59 ET TONIGHT. The last 24 hours in our vote at MLB.com
is absolute craziness. There will be at least 2.3 million ballots cast
in this finale day if last year is indicative (it’s always more each year),
and there is virtually certain to be a shocking change or two at the
end. Make sure to use up all your 25 allotted votes and blog about your
picks.

Nate Robertson’s new MLBlog is all the rage as you can tell from the comments there, just like Gum Time that he brought to Motown. Take a look at the photos that were just added to make it even more fun. Looks like Detroit has a magical summer under way, and it kind of feels like the 2005 White Sox summer when Scott Reifert started his MLBlog and masses of Sox fans jumped aboard right through a parade.

Nate will be on MLB Radio at 3:40 p.m. ET (UPDATE: RIGHT NOW), chatting with Seth and Bone on the Stayin’ Hot show. He’ll be promoting his MLBlog and talking baseball, so don’t miss it!

Nate is one of four active Major Leaguers with MLBlogs. Others so far include David Wright, Jorge Cantu and Dan Haren. More to come. How amazing would it be if the Tigers and Mets, leading their respective leagues now, met in the Fall Classic and those two representatives had a blog-off?

Our most sincere best wishes to Peter Gammons, one of the great ones. One of our MLB.com writers IM’d me today about the news story on MLB.com that I’ve been updating about Peter’s condition (thankfully the condition is good), and we were talking about all those long, long Sunday baseball notes columns we used to write for our respective former newspapers. We had Peter to thank for those; he and the Globe pioneered the concept. He’s pioneered a lot.

Double Play has been liveblogging the Sox-Mets game, so feel free to drop by with your thoughts on Pedro’s nightmare homecoming.

So who’s your Baseball Superman? We built one of our own at MLB.com and figured tonight’s full theater debut of Superman Returns warranted a superblog suggestion. Will be interested to see what people think of the movie and which MLB players have those special powers. Superman and Major League Baseball have gone hand-in-hand as institutions of Americana just about since the first World Series was played.

We always like to point out whenever Tommy Lasorda posts something. He was our very first MLBlogger, for those who might be new to the community.

Glad to see our own T.R. Sullivan finding a way to get David and Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) on an MLBlog. Mad Dog had to like that one.

Welcome back to Pete and his Churros.

The American League has been destroying the National League this Interleague season.

So, who’s blogging over the Fourth of July? Will resume Spheroids shortly…been a crazy week.

Here is another photo album that you have to see if you haven’t already. Leave a comment on Mollie’s blog and tell her which one you liked best.

Welcome to Zoë Rice, a longtime Mets fan and a new MLBlogger. You can find her new novel Pick Me Up
in the front of most bookstores for summer reading, and we especially love the baseball connotation (although unintentional) with the title of that book. If you get picked off first, what do you shout from the
dugout to your teammate at the plate? "Pick Me Up!" (Or you knock over
the water cooler.) Pretty cool to have more baseball-loving literati around here, and you can see a list of authors/MLBloggers in the side panel of this blog.

Welcome also to the Captain! Feels a little strange to call him a Rookie when you read his About page, but we’ll add him there anyway.

Poza’s Nest is now Get your Scorecards Here!!! Either way, we’re glad to have Matthew back. You can find it among the Red Sox MLBlogs listed on our new search page.

Nick just did a nice job in putting the AL Central picture in perspective. The Twins have to make up a double-digit deficit in the standings just to get in Wild Card contention, and you never know how many dominating stretches like this you can put together in a season. It’s unreal what kind of run these three clubs at the top of that division have been on lately, playing on a different plane.

(Nick, hopefully that plug will help make up for you losing an entire post by hitting the back button on your mouse tonight. All of us probably can relate. Feel free to share any back-button nightmare stories here. There needs to be a safeguard other than progressively going with Choose Draft, Save, Wait For Posting Page To Reload. Alas, look on the bright side: It used to be a typewriter world and a big advancement then was that awful white correction tape. We’re spoiled, but you didn’t lose anything on a typewriter. At least I don’t think so.)

MLBlogger Sighting on MLB.TV: Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.

Ever wonder how groundskeepers mow those cool stripes and designs on a field? Voila.

Favorite post over the weekend: Top 5 baseball movies of all-time. Join the discussion!

Mad Dog is workin’ hard for everyone, folks. Bend it like Beckham! Did you see that goal for England? And how exactly do those England fans know all of those lyrics to those chants? Dave has the World Cup covered, even if you’ve jumped ship after the USA loss.

Nike employee or just working the Google Adsense thing for some smack? Inquiring minds want to know. Maybe s/he can tell us what kind of cleats Manny wears. His baggy pants kind of fall over his cleats sometime.

Memo to Gooch: That was still a pretty awesome display: 3-run HR in the eighth, salami on white in the ninth, seven quick ribbies to force extras. But the Astros finally have broken through. Time to remove the nine W’s on the third line of the descriptive text atop Scott’s blog. The 16 W’s in the blog title are still safe until Jose throws, though.

Have a good week, everyone. Tell a friend to start an MLBlog!

It’s a bit of a hack until we nail the automated feeds with Six Apart, but hope you like the latest addition to the MLBlogosphere. The MLBlogs homepage now has a link to an aggregator page of the latest MLBlogs Active Roster, sorted alphabetically by team and blog. Will maintain that manually for now. Some older (inactive) blogs are included, but leaning on the side of inclusion in this case. Feel free to post that link somewhere on your own MLBlog (example) as a handy reference. Update 1:08 pm ET 6/25: Anchor links are added, so Zack and all of you folks with the MLB template don’t have to scroll far to find your own. For those who like to juggle their template logo from team to MLB to team, might not be able to keep up with you doing this manually, but comment here if you do and we’ll see if we can oblige. If you have an MLBlog with the default title of "My Weblog," here’s another good reason to give it a name, so it can be included as well. Feel free to post comments here going forward with any suggested additions/removals from the list on that MLB.com News Article page. Not sure yet if these will be searchable from MLB.com by virtue of entering this in our publishing system, but comment here this week if you notice one in the results.

That was a lot of linking, which is a good thing. But as you can see from the list, we still have a lot more work to do as we continue to grow a community that started from scratch in 2005. Especially you West Coast bloggers! Looking for Giants, Mariner and Padre bloggers of particular note. Please help spread the word so more and more fans will become part of a blogging community linked in from MLB.com and 30 club sites.

Mark/MLB.com

It’s official: The title on White Sox VP Scott Reifert’s Inside the White Sox
blog just got longer. A new W is being added each time 2006 AL Cy Young Lock Of The Moment Jose Contreras
keeps the winning streak going, and one more was just added to make it 16 in the title. Pardon Scott if that just made the headline break over into two lines on your Recently Updated Weblogs, but that’s why we leave some extra gray space in that area on the MLBlogs homepage. It’s a Jose thing!

Remember when people were wondering whether Tom Glavine could "hang around" long enough to get to 300 wins? Here is an amazing thought for the night: It’s a remote possibility that he will get there this year. Glavine just chalked up No. 11 tonight, and that makes it 286 for his career. He could finish with 12 or 13 at the All-Star break, and we’ll see how it lines up for a possible NL start July 11 at Pittsburgh. If he’s at 13 by then, that leaves him just 12 short. Which means he wouldn’t even have to duplicate his first half. It’s fairly unheard of for a pitcher to win 25 games in a season these days, but he has the team to do it. A couple of obstacles: Wondering how middle age treats a hurler in the dog days of the second half; and mostly a concern that if the Mets have run away with the NL East by the last month, whether he would make all of his starts. If he keeps this up in the second half, the best guess is that he falls a bit short and goes after 300 next April. But just pointing out this remarkable opportunity: 300′s not impossible in 2006. It also would mark the third time in four years that a Major League pitcher reached 300 (Rocket in 2003 for the Bombers, Mad Dog in 2004 for the Cubbies). Maybe not. But who’d have thought?

Speaking of the Mets, we have the privilege of David Wright being part of this MLBlogosphere, and everyone who saw his latest post this week remembers how hard he was on himself and setting his own expectations higher. He has been lights-out since he posted Wright Now, and that MLBlog could be really fun to watch over the All-Star break and this fall.

Mike McClary of The Daily Fungo was our MLBlogger of Week on MLB Radio’s "Under the Lights" show Friday night (always 10:20 pm ET, folks), and you can now hear the replay by clicking the drop-down menu under "Multimedia" on the MLBlogs homepage. Thanks, Mike. Email us if you’d like to appear on the show on an upcoming Friday night to talk baseball and promote your MLBlog.

Hey, this was funny — a Spheroid outside of this MLBlog! Sounds good to us — anyone who wants to post their own Spheroid rather than emailing it here and having us post it, just show us the Permalink as a comment here and we’ll add "Spheroid" to your spot on the MLBlogs Active Roster. Glad it’s catching on!

Listen to Mike McClary NOW on MLB Radio’s Under the Lights show over at MLB.com. He’s our MLBlogger of the Week…will have his appearance archived here later.

By the way, I count FIVE Major League Baseball logos on the first-screen view of this blog…and at least 21 usages of the letters "MLB"…pretty clear what company you’re in around here!

Got caught up in Ghana-USA fever here today, and thanks to Mad Dog for creating that MLBlog he’s been maintaining as a liveblog through the World Cup. Now it’s time to see what the Rocket looks like in season No. 23. One of the most interesting things today was seeing this press release from the club that reminds you that no matter how big you are, there is still a routine admin process and the transaction is handled just like any other move of a player to the parent club:

ASTROS PURCHASE CONTRACT OF CLEMENS

Seven-time Cy Young winner added to Astros roster; Sampson optioned to Round Rock

HOUSTON, TX — The Houston Astros announced today that the club has purchased the contract of right-handed pitcher Roger Clemens from Triple A Round Rock, adding the seven-time Cy Young Award winner to the 40-man roster.  Clemens will start tonight for the Astros against the Minnesota Twins at Minute Maid Park.  Following last night’s game, the club optioned right-handed pitcher Chris Sampson to Round Rock, creating a spot on the 25-man roster for Clemens.  The announcement was made by General Manager Tim Purpura.

Sampson, 28, was 1-0 with a 3.52 ERA (6ER/15.1IP) in four games (one start) for the Astros this season.  He recorded his first Major League win with seven shutout innings on June 7 against the Chicago Cubs at Minute Maid Park.

Previously in the day yesterday (June 21), the Astros outrighted left-handed pitcher Philip Barzilla to Round Rock, opening a spot on the 40-man roster that has now been filled by Clemens.

Clemens, 43, returns for his 23rd Major League season. He is 341-172 with a 3.12 ERA (1632ER/4704.1IP) in 672 career games (671 starts), and his 341 wins rank ninth all-time, one away from eighth-place Tim Keefe (according to the Elias Sports Bureau). The winner of an unprecedented seven Cy Young Awards, Clemens was 13-8 with a career-best 1.87 ERA (44ER/211.1IP) for the National League champion Astros in 2005.  His 1.87 ERA led the Majors and he also earned his 11th career All-Star selection last year, pitching one scoreless inning in the Midsummer Classic in Detroit.

Clemens started three games in the minor leagues for the Astros, on June 16 for Triple A Round Rock (5.2 innings, allowed three runs and earned the win against New Orleans), on June 11 for Double A Corpus Christi (6.2 shutout innings, struck out 11 and earned the win), and June 6 for Class A Lexington (earned a no-decision in 3.0 innings, allowing one run).

In two seasons with Houston, Clemens is 31-12 with a 2.43 ERA (115ER/425.2IP) in 65 starts. He has appeared in eight playoff games during his two years with the Astros (seven starts) and is 4-2, including a win in the 18-inning NLDS Game 4 vs. Atlanta, in which Clemens pitched three scoreless innings in relief, his first relief outing since July 18, 1984 with Boston. 

Clemens earned his seventh Cy Young during his first season with the Astros, a 2004 campaign in which he finished 18-4 with a 2.98 ERA (71ER/214.1IP) in 33 starts.  His 18 wins ranked tied for second in the NL that season.  Clemens ranks second all-time with 4,502 strikeouts, trailing only Nolan Ryan on the career list.  In addition to being the active leader in strikeouts, he also leads all active pitchers in wins (341), innings (4704.1), complete games (118), shutouts (46), and starts (671). 

Clemens also earned the Cy Young in the American League in 1986, 1987 and 1991 with Boston, 1997 and 1998 with Toronto, and 2001 with New York.  He became the second Astro to win the Cy Young Award, joining Mike Scott in 1986.  According to the BBWAA, Clemens is the first player in history to capture eight BBWAA awards, as he won the American League Most Valuable Player in 1986 to go along with his seven Cy Youngs.  He is the oldest pitcher in history to earn the Cy Young and he is one of only four pitchers (Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Gaylord Perry) to win the Cy Young in both leagues.  Clemens is the only pitcher to win the Cy Young with as many as four different teams.

Additionally, Clemens joins Christy Mathewson and Lefty Grove as the only three pitchers in Major League history to have twice as many wins as losses at any point after recording their 250th win.  Clemens’ .665 career winning percentage trails only Grove all-time among pitchers with 300 wins, and his 20 seasons with a winning record while starting at least 15 games in all are the most in baseball history.

Props to our friend Nathan over at Brew Crew Coup. About to relocate from the Upper Midwest to Houston, he can identify with many, many other Major League baseball fans in today’s nomadic society (self included). Would you believe that most fans don’t live in the same city where their favorite team plays? That was the demographic research finding by one sports magazine recently. It’s one reason that MLB.TV is such a hit today. But back to Nathan’s MLBlog. He has taken it upon himself to contact other MLBloggers and get their story about being a displaced fan. Interesting stuff, and looking forward to reading more of these. Just like we’re posting occasional Spheroids here to show who’s posting MLBlogs and why, Nathan is helping other fans like him express that fact of life and how you cope if you live many miles from your team’s ballpark. Great blog.

Friday night’s MLBlogger of the Week will be Mike McClary, proprietor of The Daily Fungo. Catch him on MLB Radio’s "Under the Lights" show with host Pete McCarthy at 10:20 pm ET (that’s the weekly time slot, folks). As always, you can email us if you’d like to nominate yourself to appear on that show to talk some baseball and promote your MLBlog in front of a large audience. And you can listen to past MLBloggers of the Week by clicking the drop-down menu under the Multimedia heading on the MLBlogs.com homepage.

If you want to know a little more about the increasing number of MLB club blogs that are springing up — and will spring up more and more — check out the MLB.com Visitor’s Guide. That’s the Major League Baseball Advanced Media company blog, and we created it to keep people informed on all of the new developments around our world, whether it’s editorial launches at MLB.com or any of the 30 MLB club sites we operate, new MLB.com Shop or Auction offerings, new artists in the Best Records series from the rehearsals.com site we power, minorleaguebaseball.com, etc.

Remarkable story about the power of baseball on the MLBlog of T.R. Sullivan, who covers the Texas Rangers for MLB.com.

Mets Magic Number seemed a little bizarre at first. Who cares what the Mets’ magic number is in May? But unless New York folds down the stretch, here’s one thing you can’t take away from that MLBlogger: It would be a unique keepsake chronicle of a season in which a team other than Atlanta finally won the NL East, and no one else to our knowledge would be able to say they chronicled it quite that way. The only thing we’d like to see is an About page and a little more insight into who’s doing that math every day and night along the way. We know it’s not David Wright.

Made one removal from the Six Apart profanity filter as a result of a comment thread over at Inside the White Sox. After a little over one year of MLBlogging, we’ve removed some language from the filter and added some, trying to keep it real and keep it right. Always interested in MLBloggers’ input along the way, and the main interest is making sure it’s a community where people can express their thoughts without a moderator climate.

Bring on The Rocket. It’s time.

So, has anyone bought a pair of Baseball Cleats yet? Just wondering.

Recently Updated Photo Albums:

• 6/19/06 – Sox v Nationals – Sox win 6-3
• Yankees Action Photos
• Nationals Archives
• Fenway Park
• Balls
• The Game
• Quick Pics
• Cubs vs Astros 6/13/06
• Tigers Vs. Jays- 6/9-6/11