November 2007
Bloggers on MLB.com
First of all, our friend CJ Wilson just posted and as usual, you gotta see his latest bloggage. The Rangers’ closer definitely is one of a kind among blogging athletes. In some cases, athletes get a hand with this stuff. In CJ’s case, he’s out there in the wilderness with his computer, just your average blogger who happens to pitch in the ninth in the Majors.
Now comes yet another reason to pay $4.95 a month for an MLBlog. If you look on the bottom of a typical MLB.com news article page now, you will see "Sphere Related Articles and Blogs." I went to my colleague Anthony Castrovince’s article about the two writers who voted for Maggs as AL MVP, and at the bottom I clicked the new Sphere link. Here is what it showed me:
What this means to you as an MLBlogger is that you now have even more opportunity for visibility. Sphere’s algorithm is going to look for other MLB.com articles that are related to that topic, and it is going to look WITHIN the MLBlogs.com community only for related blogs. I don’t know exactly what the search entails for those MLBlogs in terms of keywords/etc, but I will pass along more info as I find out, in case there is anything specifically that bloggers can do to increase their chances of showing up in this feature. I can tell you that we did in the billions of page views again in 2007, and that no other blogging community can derive the same concentration of baseball-interest only.
Try it out. Click on a ton of MLB.com articles off our homepage, and then Sphere it on the bottom and see what happens.
Elsewhere around the MLBlogosphere:
It was really nice to see all of the warm tributes left as comments by fans on the Reds MLBlog we created after the passing of beloved broadcaster and former pitcher Joe Nuxhall this past week. If you haven’t already, scan those comments and you are reminded about what exactly people love about the national pastime. They love people like Joe who loved the game.
"Baseball never has an offseason anymore." So begins the first post of a new MLBlogger named Richard at SoxNation Rep…I’ll hold nothing back! Welcome to Richard, and remember to start your MLBlog if you haven’t already so that you can start opining and spreading gossip about the Hot Stove League. An MLBlog is a 365-day thing, after all. And now it might show up on the bottom of a typical MLB.com article page read by millions of fans.
Offseason means serious blogging
Congratulations to all the Red Sox bloggers here, but really congratulations to all MLBloggers. It was an incredible season of very diverse and impassioned baseball blogging, and one of the great things about having an MLBlog is that now is really gets interesting. The offseason is made for one of these. It’s your place to hyphothesize and to spread the buzz and to post rumors and to pontificate and critique all those moves or non-moves that your favorite team will be making between now and Spring Training. And it’s the only place on the Internet where you can legally blog with the official marks and logos of your favorite Major League Baseball club, so you don’t get hassled by anyone.
Welcome to some MLBlogs rookies like Dan, who’s a NYer in L.A. Welcome to Bear, who just introduced himself on Wednesday at Key’s Baselog. I think everyone should stop by the new blog of Rick and leave a comment about his latest post. Do you think he was right or wrong to spend all that money to take his 3-year-old son with him to Red Sox games this season? What, is there even a question about this? Go tell Rick what you think. And Allen is another Red Sox fan who’s looking for fellow SF Bay Area members of The Nation to get together and keep celebrating. Oh, someone has a Fantasy Camp blog going. That’s a great reason to start one, too.
Survivor: Camden Yards. It’s not a TV show. It’s a new MLBlog. Please welcome a fan who has been in Perennial Hope Mode. The way things have gone lately, next year could be the Orioles’ year. It could be anyone’s year. That was just proven. My 2007 Opening Day prediction of a Rockies world championship did not quite come to pass. But I think it showed that you have a pretty reasonable chance of prognostication success if you go with darkhorses today. Competitive balance is here.
Tommy Lasorda, our pioneer who saved the first-ever MLBlogs post in April 2005 (fittingly enough about Jackie Robinson), has been writing about the autobiography he wrote. If you missed that blog about his book signing, you can find one of his chapters online. Keep the Tommyblog handy all the time. It will be interesting to see what he has to say about Joe Torre now that they’re together in L.A.
It was a unique postseason (think we had enough sweeps?), although on a personal note it was not exactly ideal to finish it up on IV at a Coors Field first aid room stretcher for six innings with a flu/altitude sickness. And to answer Zack’s question, the New York City Marathon was a day unlike any other. Injuries derailed my time but I finished and that just put me in the 1% bracket of people who have run marathons. I encourage anyone to try it, starting with Halfs. Seeing the Mile 20 sign entering The Bronx was a real high, and once you get into Central Park and go under the Mile 24 sign near Cat Hill, at that point you are running with your eyes on the sky and greater forces are carrying you home. The crowds were truly unbelievable, and I mean on the other side of the barricades. If you ever run a marathon, write your name all over your body.
Please be sure to leave a comment here if you start a new blog, as another way to introduce it to everyone. And any time you comment here or any other MLBlog, BE SURE to leave your URL as a breadcrumb. The more comments you leave on other MLBlogs, the more traffic you will get. The more often you post, the more traffic you will get. The more often you show up on the Recently Updated Weblogs feed, the more likely you will show up in that main promo area on MLBlogs.com. Have fun this offseason and make sure your MLBlog is your Hot Stove headquarters.
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