Best baseball sites and blogs

Major League Baseball has a firm grasp on the future of the sport and is doing a better job marketing today than perhaps any other professional sport.  Other leagues like the National Football League (as it rose to increased prominence in the 1970s and 1980s) and the National Basketball Association (by marketing indidual players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson during the late 1980s and early 1990s) have had their own day in the marketing limelight, but no sport is doing as much for the future of its game as MLB.

I am a fan of all sports, but MLB.com gives me more reason to invest time in its Web site than any other sport in the world.  I use MLB.tv, play fantasy baseball and sample games like Beat the Streak from time to time.  The MLB reporters, while not as tough on teams as independent sports reporters, still ask a lot harder questions than their counterparts in other leagues and have a lot more access to the players and coaches.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, GOOD JOB baseball!  MLB has really hit the mark when it comes to providing online content and is getting better year in and year out, making the sport more accessible and fun to follow.

Now let's get to the good stuff.  Here are the sites I enjoy the most around the Internet:

• UmpBump.com - perhaps my favorite baseball Web site, the writers combine a great knowlege of the game with acerbic wit to make their readings both insightful and comical.  They weave in important news stories like Frank Thomas being released with, as Mike & Mike of ESPN would say, news of the weird, commenting on things like Eric Byrnes' freaky streaky 'stace straight out of a 1970s high school yearbook.  They also tell it like it is.  They aren't reporters getting chummy with players in the locker room.  They are fans like the rest of us who tell it like we want to hear it.  (Plus the Jamie Kotsay post was an automatic classic and a great Google Easter Egg to this day.)

• HardballTimes.com - this site is in dire need of a facelift, but for pure number crunching and analysis of the player and teams we love (or love to hate) there isn't a better Web site on the World Wide Web.  It has such informative posts I wouldn't be surprised to catch sabermetrics wizard Bill James reading it from time to time when he's feeling lazy at Fenway.  Not only do the guys at Hardball Times offer unabashed opinions, they back those opinions up with mountains of statistics and analysis.  Like I said before, if you get over how it's a bit hard to navigate, this is truly one of the best baseball sites on the planet.

• Alyssa Milano's "*touch* 'em all" blog - Wow, who saw this coming?  This is why I love MLB.  They just made it a million times easier for me to find great baseball blogs (and even create my own).  Alyssa Milano is a Dodger fan (which we will forgive her for), but this Hollywood star knows her stuff between the lines.  I haven't been a longtime reader of her site having just found it over the past couple of weeks, but I find myself checking back with increased regularity... for more than just pictures of Alyssa Milano.  In her last post alone, she touched on the issue of fewer and fewer black kids playing baseball, voiced her frustration at the Dodgers' lackluster start, (Andruw Jones anyone?), and pledged her undying loyalty to Joe Torre.  I loved it.