Happy Birthday MLBlogs!

I can’t believe I missed this on the actual day, but I guess celebrating MLBlogs’ 4th birthday in the wee hours of the morning on April 19th is good enough.

Wow! 4 years! I’ve been blogging here since (I think) March of 2006. Back then, this place was a very small community, so small that Tommy Lasorda and myself were mentioned side-by-side in an article trying to attract people here. It cost $50 per year to have a blog here, so there were not tons of new blogs being created every day. There were two templates per team, and there was a lot less freedom with the design of the actual words on the blog. Pictures were spare at best, the whole organization of the front page was different, and there was no streaming video content (then again, YouTube was only 2 months old at the time - weird). I used to blog every day at that point (which meant a lot more comments/followers for me … they’re all gone now). The blog to see was Red Sox Chick. She was awesome, but she moved to either blogspot or wordpress and now is at WEEI, so now her mother, Red Sox Hen, has taken her spot at MLBlogs. One woman loved Eric Byrnes, and her blog’s team allegiance changed wherever he went. There was Joe at Dugout Diary. He’s a freelance writer, and in addition to giving me some cool tips and books on journalism and baseball, he set up, along with a few other bloggers, “We’re Worried About You” pages while I was in Israel during a war. It was awesome to know that I had managed to make friends whose faces I could never pick out in a crowd, but who nevertheless had my back.

One of the first player’s blogs I can remember was Dan Haren’s. He was playing for Oakland at the time and had just gotten engaged. It was interesting to finally get a player’s take on what goes on behind the scenes in the MLB. For so long, I had imagined the personalities, tendencies, and actions of various players around the league, and Haren’s blog finally opened the door to show me reality.

There was no top 100 blogs or rankings or any of that. In fact, the guys (because it’s more than just Mark) behind the scenes of this site were not able to monitor everything that happens as closely. The MLBlogosphere blog actually started posting regularly around the same time I did - in March of 2006. You couldn’t search blogs by tags (I don’t even remember if there were tags in the beginning). On the front page, there was a panel where every single blog (and a description of that blog) was listed. To find a blog, you simply scrolled and clicked. That’s how small this place was. I can’t imagine how long that panel would be now.  

Now, MLBlogs is all over the place. In addition to becoming a huge blogging host site, this thing has expanded to both Facebook and Twitter. In fact, I probably forgot to wish a happy birthday to MLBlogs because it didn’t show up on Facebook. Everyone knows that Facebook is the place to go for that type of stuff (come to think of it, I think my dad’s birthday might be today - I should go check Facebook).

There are ads for MLBlogs on TV, personalities like Alissa Milano and October Gonzo, links on team websites, and quotes from the blogs on MLB.com. People do not have to search for this place anymore to find it - it’s right in front of them.

Meanwhile, this place is still as personal as ever. Mark and all the guys behind the scenes do a fantastic job keeping tabs on bloggers. I’m friends with people from here on Facebook. My birthday has garnered a front page feature. Mark responds to peoples posts in the comments section. Feedback is still playing a vital role in the development and every day workings of this site. It is amazing how dynamic this whole place is.

And while it may be a bit narcissistic to talk about me here, discussing all the changes to MLBlogs wouldn’t be complete for me without mentioning how MLBlogs has changed me.

When I started blogging here, I was fifteen (I’m turning nineteen next week). I was a sophomore in high school, and I was pretty sick at the time with a bum stomach (name a stomach problem and I have it). MLBlogs was an outlet and a community for me where I could go to forget about all the problems in my life and just relax. Everyone here was amazing, and we all had a common interest that created thousands upon thousands of conversations. It was great.

Today, it’s still great. I’m mostly healthy now and finishing up my freshman year in college (although I’m technically, credit-wise, a sophomore). I don’t write here nearly as frequently as I used to, which is partly a good thing. That means I’m busy, something I wasn’t healthy enough to be when I started blogging. I wish, however, that I could write here as much as I used to, though, because this blog has made me into a much better writer.

When I started blogging, I was very uptight. Proper punctuation, grammar - everything they teach you in school when you write an essay. As a journalism/creative writing major, however, I can loosen up. I can make up my own rules when I write. Sometimes fragments are good. Sometimes it’s okay to start a sentence with “and”. At all times, it’s okay to have fun while writing. MLBlogs has taught me that, and that’s an invaluable lesson I never would have learned in school.

Because of MLBlogs, I’ve written some things that I’m very proud of, even though they were never published anywhere else nor have they made me any money (first post, the most epic injury list ever, Sept 11, 2006, Cory Lidle, Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter to Roger Clemens, Red Sox win ‘07 WS, a friend dies, Lester’s no-hitter, unbelievable comeback in the ALCS vs Rays, BU hockey wins NCAA title).

Because of MLBlogs, I have a whole new community of friends with whom I can discuss one of the most important things in life (baseball, obviously.)

Because of MLBlogs, I have had the opportunity to make my voice heard across the globe whenever I feel like putting in the effort to write up a post. It’s a chance that I should value more highly.

So thanks, MLBlogs. It’s been a great 3 years for me and 4 years for you. Here’s to many more!


(Just a little BU shout-out. Worked on this video the night I was supposed to be studying for astronomy. What do you all think?)