I get by with a little help from my friends

Due to a stroke of good luck and some good timing, I've picked up a new job today. For someone who's been unemployed for 5 months, that's a good thing. I will be writing a weekly column on Major League Baseball for the on-line baseball magazine, baseball de world.

The columns I write there won't appear here on this blog, so please go the other site and give them a look. There will be a new one posted every Wednesday. I hope you enjoy them, and please leave comments on anything that strikes your interest.

As I said, I got lucky with this, and I want to give credit where credit is due. I started writing a blog when I first moved to the United Kingdom. It didn't have anything to do with baseball, just what it was like to be an American living in the United Kingdom. At the end of last year, after not having worked for 2 months, and no prospects for jobs on the horizon, I got bored and decided to branch out and start doing something on baseball.

There are thousands of blogs on MLB, and I didn't really want to go that route, as what can I say differently than thousands of other people are already saying. So I deiced ed to do something a little different and look at baseball from the international angle, and how it is spreading around the globe. I was amazed at how widespread the game is.

I check a lot of different sites every day for material, or just for my personal reading. I came across baseball de world, and it become one of my daily reads. One day I spotted an ad asking for contributors. I sent off an e-mail, with a link to the blog here, and asked if they might be interested. To my great surprise, they were. I've always wanted to be a writer, and baseball is the greatest game in the world. To combine the two and make a little bit of money off of it is something most of us here reading dream about. I got lucky and get to do it.

But to go back to the title, I want to thank a few people, and give credit where it is due. One of the first blogs I ever read was Shysterball, by Craig Calcaterra. Through Craig, I ended up meeting (cyberly speaking) Jason of It IS About The Money, Stupid; Mark, from Way Back And Gone; Sara, from 8th House; and Nick, from Royal Ruminatons. Not only are they fellow bloggers, but they are friends as well, as we frequently exchange e-mails and IM. Because of them, I decided to go ahead and try the first blog, and because of their encouragement, I went ahead and started this one, which lead to the other job. I am extremely grateful to them for their support.

Also, because of this blog, I have been able to get to know several other people who are bloggers, as well as few people who have left comments. They are all in the blog roll to the left, and in the interest of getting this posted, I'm only going to list them, and not link to them. But you can get to them easily enough.

The guys at East Windup Chronicle

The guys at Out Of Left Field, to include someone who has to be my distantly-related cousin.

Matt, at True Stories Of Korean Baseball

The Common Man

Lar at Wezen-Ball

Josh at Jorge Says No!

There are others, and please don't be offended if I forgot to mention you. Let me know if I did, and I'll update this. Anyhow, thanks to all these people for coming here and reading what I've written, and leaving comments. Because of you all, I was able to land my dream job.

Writing about baseball. Life is sweet.

Thanks.