Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone gets to spend today with family, friends, and loved ones. But just in case you happened across this little corner of the world, thank you for your continued reading.

I have been writing on this site for nearly four years, have written nearly 3,500 posts and made over 122,000 comments, so it's safe to say I am quite invested in True Blue LA. I'd like to think the site this year has improved by leaps and bounds, because this has been the most professionally satisfying year of my life.

Back in February I quit my day job, and made the leap to cover the Dodgers full time. I am extremely grateful for spending six weeks in Arizona for spring training, which was helped greatly by your support. It's a trip I plan to make again next spring, with pitchers and catchers reporting a mere 82 days from now.

Thanks to being there every day - including spring training, I covered 114 baseball games this season and spent 131 days in a major league clubhouse - I was able to build a rapport with those in uniform, and I am very proud of my coverage of the team this season.

It couldn't have happened without the support of veteran writers Dylan Hernandez, Ken Gurnick, and Tony Jackson. For the bulk of spring training, the four of us were the constants, and they went out of their way to help me whenever I had a question.

I had covered the Dodgers part-time from 2009-2011, mostly on weekends, and I would apply for credentials on a game-by-game basis. In spring training this season, I was able to get a credential for Camelback Ranch that covered me for all home games and mornings in the clubhouse, but I applied for road games on a game-by-game basis as well. This was expected and frankly, even though I applied for a regular season credential with the Dodgers, I expected this season to be credentialed again on a game-by-game basis.

It was on March 27, eight days before the regular season began, when I found out that the Dodgers approved my credential for the season. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

I am quite thankful to be doing something I genuinely love for a living.

Thank you to Brandon Lennox for providing unparalleled content on the Dodgers minor league system. Thank you to Phil Gurnee for bringing me aboard, and to David Young and Craig Minami for filling in when I occasionally get burned out. Thanks to Mike White for his beloved Fave Five columns.

But most of all, thank you to everyone for reading. Here's to a great rest of 2012 and an awesome 2013.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.