Happy BBA Day!

While Nathaniel has been busy running down the picks of the Rule 5 draft, I’ve been catching up on work (boo!) but I will be getting back into a daily groove again starting tomorrow. Before I turn my attention back to work this evening, I wanted to wish you all a very happy Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA) day.

The purpose of Baseball Bloggers Alliance Day is to allow member sites a chance to step away from their typical content and writing to talk about the organization. What is the BBA? Why am I a part of it? What value is there in it? These are some of the questions that are begging to be answered on such a special day.

First we need to start with what the BBA is. To give a little bit of the history and purpose of the organization I’m going to turn to our founder, Daniel Shoptaw, who had this to say on his Cardinals blog today:

The BBA started up around September of last year. The idea was to get some bloggers from across baseball together, have some interaction, give each other some contacts to help enhance their blogging. Once people started joining, though, the thing continued to grow. Now, there are roughly 240 blogs claiming membership in the organization.One of the great things about the BBA is getting the perspective of other fans, knowledgeable ones that follow their team with the same enthusiasm and intensity that we follow the Cardinals with. Following most of these guys and girls on Twitter gives you the complete view of most everything. You’ll see both sides of a trade or a signing. You’ll hear rumors and see them lauded or shot down. Plus, you get a ton of witty comments and conversations.To go along with the stated purpose of the BBA, to encourage discussion, we’ve also tapped into the power of groups by doing our annual post-season awards. When we started that last year, I expected that we’d see a vast difference between our selections (done by a newer, more statistically-oriented generation) and the baseball writers’ picks. Surprisingly, both years the two groups have agreed on most things, including all of the major awards. It seems like the writers are moving into the 21st century as well.

Now you know what the Baseball Bloggers Alliance is and how it came to be. If you’d like to know more, Daniel did an interview over on Misc. Baseball which I encourage everyone to check out.

Which bring us to how I came across the BBA and my reasons for joining.

Last fall I noticed an article that Michael Jong published on our Florida Marlins site, Marlin Maniac. I can’t remember the purpose of that column exactly, but in it he mentioned that he was proud to represent the Marlins in the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. Intrigued, I emailed him to get some info and after some back and forth, I wound up talking with Daniel. That same day I joined and have been a member ever since. Membership follows the writer and not the site so I was a part of the Kansas City Royals chapter when I was still the Lead Writer for Kings of Kauffman. When we launched Call to the Pen, I was operating as the lead of two sites so CttP could only be added as a “Friend of the BBA.” As soon as I transitioned the lead duties of KoK over to Michael Engel, Call to the Pen traded in it’s “friend” status and became a full fledged member of the organization. Kings of Kauffman remains a member of the alliance since Michael officially joined as soon as he became the lead of our Royals site.

My primary reason for joining was to network with other baseball writers in an organized fashion as we all work for a common goal. I learned very quickly how valuable networking is when I started covering the Royals for FanSided and the BBA gave me another avenue to connect with other folks and build mutually beneficial relationships with them. It seemed like a natural fit.

Call to the Pen is assigned to the General Baseball Chapter. As you can probably guess, this chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance consists of sites that cover baseball without a specific focus on any one given team or aspect of the game of baseball (e.g. baseball history, fantasy baseball, etc). One of my goals for 2011 is to spend more time working with the other sites in our chapter in efforts of cross-promotion, linking, and things along those lines so you will probably gain some familiarity with the other sites that are a part of the general chapter going forward.

I’ve now strayed too far from my work duties and it’s going to be a late night so I should probably wrap this up. I hope everyone found some value in the above and learned a little something about the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. Until December 10th, 2011 rolls around have a happy BBA day, 2010!