If, like me, you are delighted with the new MLBlogs set up you may be wondering if there is any way that you could send MLB Advanced Media (who run MLBlogs) some extra cash. I guess that you could argue that the DHL ads that have been running on all our sites is a kind of payment, but it's never really enough is it?

So why would a multi-million dollar organization make something free? I have 3 scenarios;

1) MLBlogs was losing money so they made it free, cut staffing to the bone and run it as a loss leader.

2) The more bloggers that register the more they can charge for advertising. Free means more blogs which means more ad revenue.

3) Out if the goodness of their hearts.

Whichever one it is, using this site recently has been the equivalent of going from an i-pod back to a walkman,so from today this blog will be moving to here. It's exciting because it's got links, and picture of Slough!     

Given that today is an off day for the D-Backs I will use this opportunity to spread peace and understanding between nations. The folks at Red State, Blue State (which I believe is owned and run by the Chinese government) are fond of posting this clip of the current U.S. United Nation's representative.

However the people of Britain are not without their own special views of the world, and here is a list of some of them. This doesn't include my own personal favorite which is;

Q: Which ancient civilization built the first roads in Britain?

A: Was it the apes?

So close!

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For anybody who didn't see last night's games against the Dodgers let me tell you that it was quickfire duel that lasted less than 90 minutes. For anybody who did see it, can you let me know if it's over yet?

Fortunately I was able to distract myself with American Idol and watching Gordon Ramsay breach every employer/employee relationship law on the statutes.

Can I add that whilst we all wish Doug Davis the best in his upoming surgery,  yesterday's TV coverage during the game was WAY over the top. I hate to seem like heartless ******* but there is nothing intrinsically courageous about having surgery for thyroid cancer, it's a necessity. Any courage will come if the operation is not successful and luckily that is highly unlikely.

My suspicion is that Doug would agree with this, and to effectively compare him (as was done last night) with a youngster who had undergone leukemia treatment is borderline offensive. Hopefully we can now move on and look forward to Doug pitching again in a couple of months.

Yesterday found me working ith the acclaimed British Columbian artist Stan Douglas. I won't go into the details but suffice to say that my likeness will shortly tower over the people of Vancouver Kim Jong-il style.

Whilst I was suffering for someone else's art I was kept going by the prospect of watching the D-Back's home opener on my arrival home, and I was indeed richly rewarded with a feast of home runs against the hated Dodgers.

What this also brought home to me is what a good deal we laid back West Coast folks get with regard to baseball. Whilst much is often made of East Coast teams getting all the media coverage what rarely seems to get mentioned is that fans on this side of the continent get a veritable feast of baseball. Today alone I can watch games from 10am right through to at least 10pm whilst those poor saps in the East have to wait until after lunch to see the games begin and stay up until after midnight to see them finish.

Advantage West Coast.

ps since these posts now seem to take an inordinately long time to be published by MLBlogs I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Happy Christmas 

It must be, because yesterday the Diamondbacks were involved in a game that wasn't close. This is traditionally seen as the first sign of the Apocalypse (the second sign is Paula Abdul forming a coherent sentence). But death and destruction is a small price to pay for a convincing win over division rivals.

Is it too early to be talking about Micah Owing's as a Cy Young candidate? (that's my submission for the MLB Homepage). He was certainly helped out yesterday by a Rockie's team who were swinging at anything (Tulowitski struck out in the third before Owing's had even got to the mound), but either way the hitters were patient and actually managed to drive in some runs, and if we win one of the next two then it will have been a decent road trip, if we win both it will have been a good one.

On the subject of the Rockies, yesterday they looked like a team who were burdened by the achievments of last year, and this can't be improved by the fact that they are stringing out the presentations over the three game series (Pennant tonight, Championship rings on Sunday) if I were Clint Hurdle I would want this all over with and get my team concentrating on the here and now (not to mention that it's a fantastic way to fire up the Arizona players).    

Still if it works for us then it's all good.

For a critique of MLblogs tech support I suggest that you read Hook,Linedrive and Sinker but it's important to remember that MLB as a whole regard technical glitches as a compulsory component of any new "rollout" as these poor saps who purchased MLB Mosaic are finding out (when I last purchased it I was convinced that it was sponsored by a company called "Buffering").

But technical issues aside this exciting new blogosphere is still an awful long way away from what it should be. It's great that a quote from a blog is on MLB's main page, but it would be even greater if they changed it occasionally (I'm beginning to actually believe that the rest of the Met's team will step up for the injured players), and it's also great that a blog will be featured on the main MLBlogs page, and thankfully that blog today (and for the rest of eternity) is somebody called Alyssa Milano, and I look forward to reading this otherwise unheralded writer.

But I'm afraid that what we have here (and what we British are trained to spot from an early age) is a fully formed class system. The "Pro" bloggers get links from the front page (and even a poignantly pathetic little star at the top of their blog) the rest of us get nothing. Oh sure we can write in (cap in hand) asking that one of our little quotes please be put on the main site, but that's all.

But you know what's even worse? Most of us aren't even at the bottom of this class structure because at least people have read us in the past and are aware of our existence, but if a newcomer were to start a magnificent blog today I would find it almost impossible to stumble across it short of accidentally typing the title of the blog into google.

Even all of this wouldn't be so much of an issue if the "Pro" bloggers were any good, or committed to what they do, but of the ten players and broadcasters listed, only one has updated their blog since March 26th, and that's fair enough, they are very busy right now, just don't give them pride of place on the site (I have less sympathy for the two featured mascots who haven't updated their blogs since the turn of the year).

I will of course struggle on as I have a solid core of what I imagine to be regular readers but I guess that I really don't understand tag clouds at all. 

It's certainly been nice to spend the last few days watching men hit balls with bats;but enough about my private life, for the baseball season has finally started, and for the D-Backs it's been a slighty unsettling first series. The good news is that Webb showed that his spring training numbers were meaningless and Haren pitched a decent game too. The bad news is that Lyon blew a save and given that Arizona seems determined to continue it's policy of only being involved in one run games a solid closer is a necessity.Of course only an idiot would panic at this stage BUT I AM CALLING FOR FRONT OFFICE RESIGNATIONS IMMEDIATELY! Okay maybe not, but I suspect that Lyon will revert being an 8th inning pitcher before April is out.

The other bad news is that the team still can't hit, and it specifically can't hit in a run scoring situation. The conventional wisdom has been that this young team's batting average will creep up this year, if it doesn't we are in trouble.

But you can't judge a team by it's first three games in a cold and wet Cincinatti so let's see how it goes in a cool and cloudy Denver.