The FanSided Network continues to grow and reach a broader audience. With our content partnership with Sports Illustrated our work is also featured at SI.com, making it a certainty that what you write won’t go unnoticed.

We’re primarily looking for individuals who are passionate about the game and want to share their voice with countless readers. Topics are wide open and generally up to our writers, so long as they are baseball-related in some way. Opinionated columns are key, provided you know what you’re talking about and can back up your opinions with actual knowledge.

Prior experience writing in an online platform is also beneficial, but certainly not required. With a growing collection of writers within the network, there’s a great group to learn from, network with, and help you out along the way – making this a great place to get started if you’re an aspiring journalist, budding writer, or just simple someone looking to expand on a hobby.

Think you might have some interest in joining the team or know someone who would? Head over and complete our online application. You’ll be asked to share some insight into why you’d like to join us, what your background is like, and a sample of your writing. We’ll be in touch from there and will be happy to answer whatever questions you might have as we further discuss the expectations that we ask of our writing team.

(Image Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports)

If you consider yourself as obsessed with the game of baseball as some of us here at Call to the Pen and FanSided MLB are, then you might have some interest in seeing your team’s colors everywhere you look. Some cover their homes in logos, photos, and memorabilia. Some tattoo their team’s logo, carrying it with them everywhere that they go. Others wear nothing but team colors year round – jerseys, shirseys, and that lucky hat they’ve had for years – no matter where they go. Now you can wrap your Internet browser up in team colors as well, completely immersing your browsing experience in Cardinal red, Dodger blue, or any other team that you follow.

Plus, these browser themes are now interactive – keeping you up to date on scores, highlights, and breaking news. They’ll also keep you informed of some season long exclusive promotions straight from MLB, most of which are typically free to enter and participate in.

MLB.com has released new browser themes for the 2013 season for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. All 30 teams are available in one central location and are all downloadable for free! There’s even a standard AL/NL one for those of you who can’t pick just one team.

And we’ve made it easy for you, just download a full bracket here.

Millions of brackets are filled out each and every March for the NCAA Tournament by casual fans, die-hards, and for simple office pools. Grab a group of friends if you need to and challenge each other to see who can predict the most correct outcomes.

Louisville, Kansas, Indiana, and Gonzaga took home honors as the top seeds in each region. Ohio State, Duke, Georgetown, and Miami check in as #2 seeds. There isn’t a region that will be easy and there’s always an upset (or several) that is never expected. It’s the beauty of the tournament – anyone can win on any given day.

FanSided will have you covered throughout the tournament, with up to the moment highlights and analysis at the center of our coverage, Busting Brackets, as well as our network’s home, FanSided.com.

As most of you know, Call to the Pen is one of the cornerstone sites with FanSided MLB and the FanSided Network – a fact we’re pretty proud of here. One of our own here within FS MLB, Lewie Pollis, has been named as a finalist for a SABR Analytics Research Award in the Contemporary Commentary category. Lewie is our Senior Editor at Wahoo’s on First, our Cleveland Indians site, and is up against some tough competition for the award so we want to put as much support behind him as we can.

Voting can be done from any one of four different locations including SABR’s homepage and Baseball Prospectus. Links to all four options can be found over at WoF.

The deadline to cast your vote is February 21st.

These are non paid positions, but we are capable of offering some great opportunities for exposure and a chance to build your personal portfolio and resume. There are a host of other non-monetary benefits to joining our team and this network:

> FanSided’s custom site design

> Complete technical support

> Programs to help coach and educate our writers

> A growing community of talent baseball writers

> A network-wide preference to promote from within

> SEO experience

> Your content linked to from our 200+ sites

We also have an exclusive content partnership with SportsIllustrated.com – something that not only offers each of our writers some phenomenal exposure opportunities, but also will help facilitate our rapid growth moving forward and in the months to come. Ever wanted to see your work appear on SI.com? This could be your chance.

Anyone interested in applying for one of our open positions or curious to know more about the expectations we ask of our writers, please complete our online application. We’ll be in touch from there.

Our current open positions at CttP, and some of the expectations of each position, are as follows:

Staff Writer

> Contribute at least 2 feature length posts a week

> Help promote the site and drive traffic

Those interested in writing more than two posts a week are absolutely welcome, as we’re always looking for additional members of the staff to help cover and respond to news right away. Our Staff Writers are also free to continue writing elsewhere, if they so choose to, but it should be noted that we do ask that anything published on our sites remain exclusive (i.e. we don’t permit dual posting).

Social Media Coordinator

> Focus principally on building the site through social media efforts, particularly Facebook and Twitter

> Engage and interact with current and potential readers

> Build the site’s brand

> Help maintain The Hub

This position is for those less inclined to write, but who still want to be an active part of the staff and the site’s growth.

Since the newsletter is fully customizable, you can subscribe to all of your favorite FanSided sites. And once a day, you’ll get an email with all of the top headlines from the teams that you follow.

FanSided has a ton of awesome sites besides Call to the Pen that you’d probably be interested in.

We think you’ll love this newsletter. It is super handy. Give it a try by signing up below:

To make it even better, you can customize the teams or sites that are included in the daily email you’ll receive. You can choose your team(s) by region, sport, team or topic – and in any combination, you’re in control. There are over 200 sites here within the FanSided Network – covering any team, in any sport – that you can choose from.

But that’s not all, this service is also completely free of charge and there’s no need to worry about it overloading your inbox. It’s a true one-a-day consolidated collection of content for you to peruse.

Obviously if you’re reading CttP, you are a fan of baseball from at least one angle (or perhaps you are a devoted friend or family member of myself or one of our other writers). Pending where in the country you’re from and where your fandom allegiances lie, here are a few simple suggestions that you could consider including in your newsletter subscription:

• Seedlings to Stars – the other half of our general baseball coverage
• Yanks Go Yard – for the Yankee fans
• BoSox Injection – can’t have a link for the Yankees without recognizing the hated rivals
• Musket Fire – keep up with all Belichick, Brady, and Co. have going on in Patriots country
• Arrowhead Addict – the mecca for KC Chiefs fans (and the site the network began around)
• Plus many, many more.

Sign up here today to give it a try.

These are non paid positions, but we are capable of offering some great opportunities for exposure and a chance to build your personal portfolio and resume. There are a host of other non-monetary benefits to joining our team and this network:

> FanSided’s custom site design

> Complete technical support

> Programs to help coach and educate our writers

> A growing community of talent baseball writers

> A network-wide preference to promote from within

> SEO experience

> Your content linked to from our 200+ sites

We also have an exclusive content partnership with SportsIllustrated.com – something that not only offers each of our writers some phenomenal exposure opportunities, but also will help facilitate our rapid growth moving forward and in the months to come. Ever wanted to see your work appear on SI.com? This could be your chance.

Anyone interested in applying for one of our open positions or curious to know more about the expectations we ask of our writers, please complete our online application. We’ll be in touch from there.

Our current open positions at CttP, and some of the expectations of each position, are as follows:

Staff Writer

> Contribute at least 2 feature length posts a week

> Help promote the site and drive traffic

Those interested in writing more than two posts a week are absolutely welcome, as we’re always looking for additional members of the staff to help cover and respond to news right away. Our Staff Writers are also free to continue writing elsewhere, if they so choose to, but it should be noted that we do ask that anything published on our sites remain exclusive (i.e. we don’t permit dual posting).

Social Media Coordinator

> Focus principally on building the site through social media efforts, particularly Facebook and Twitter

> Engage and interact with current and potential readers

> Build the site’s brand

> Help maintain The Hub

This position is for those less inclined to write, but who still want to be an active part of the staff and the site’s growth.

The FanSided Network is the fastest-growing independent sports network in the world and through our partnership with Sports Illustrated, we are only growing faster. If you’d like to reach a greater audience, what better way to reach them than by seeing your work on the pages of SI.com?

We have openings for staff writers and we would ask that each writer be available to write a minimum of two feature-length posts per week. If you are more interested in putting your own spin on news items, that can also be of use, though it would require the ability to post more frequently. Applicants are not required to give up any other writing gigs, but all work that appears on CttP would have to be exclusive to our pages.

Not much of a writer but still want to be a part of a great site and network? We are also looking for someone to operate our social media accounts and interact with fans and readers.

At FanSided, we pride ourselves on our family-like atmosphere and our dedication to making sure our staff has the tools to succeed. We also promote from within whenever possible, so if running your own site on our network is something that intrigues you, this can be a stepping stone to that end.

To be considered, please follow this link and fill out our application. When you do, one of our directors (probably me) will be in touch with you to discuss your candidacy and answer any questions you may have. This position is unpaid, but a great way to make a name for yourself and open some potential doors while writing for a great network with the backing of SI. For the ambitious writer, it’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.