During my 30-year career with the Burbank Police Department, I spent 23 years as a detective, including 16 years as the department’s lead robbery investigator. And though my partners and I didn’t catch ’em all, we certainly put our fair share of bad guys behind bars, some of them for a very long time.

Even though I retired from the job in 2010, I still look back on my law enforcement career and do so with tremendous pride. I also realize that I never would have enjoyed the successes that I had were it not for the help that I frequently received from equally dedicated detectives from neighboring jurisdictions and in some cases neighboring states. The fact is, the crooks didn’t care what color the street signs were and they knew no boundaries, and to be successful, we all had to check our egos at the door and work closely with one another – something that I thoroughly enjoyed doing. This working together thing is, of course, called ‘networking’ and without it, a lot of bad guys would never have been caught.

When Scott Harvey and I decided to expanded our (then) three-year-old ThinkBlueLA interactive Dodger forum to include a full blown blog site, we really didn’t know what to expect, nor did we really know the protocol of administering a blog site. But one thing that I did know from my extensive law enforcement career is that to be successful, I would undoubtedly need to network with other bloggers. Sure, I read my fair share of articles from among the hundreds of Dodger blog sites out there and many of them were outstanding, but others not so much. But the bottom line is that I was a blogging rookie and the only way that I felt I would be successful would be to align ThinkBlueLA with some of the better sites out there; in other words, by networking.

It’s all about networking. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka & Evan Chavez)

During the 2012 season, I was blessed to come to know and become friends with quite a few fellow bloggers and journalists (yes, there is a very distinctive difference between the two), most of whom cover the Dodgers on a daily basis. In fact, I came to know some of the best in the business including Eric Stephen from True Blue LA, Dylan Hernandez and Steve Dilbeck from the LA Times, Mark Saxon and Ramona Shelburne from ESPN LA, Roberto Baly from Vin Scully is my Home Boy, and J.P. Hoornstra from the LA Daily News, among others. Here again, I can honestly say the I never would have enjoyed the successes that I had were it not for the help and guidance that I received from these very talented bloggers and writers.

As most of you know by now, our goal at ThinkBlueLA is to provide our readers with a fresh new perspective of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Dodgers organization as seen through the eyes of their loyal fans. We intentionally avoided falling into the mainstream of simply reporting Dodger news and game re-caps which, quite honestly, can be found anywhere. Instead, we have and will continue to provide stories that are more on the personal interest side of things, including reports and stories from the Dodgers minor league affiliates.

Herein lies the point of this post (finally).

Of the handful of Dodger blog sites that I check out on a regular basis, there is one that I have pretty much followed since my first days as a blogger – and with good cause. The site has been around for several years and was originally called “New Mexico Fan,” but recently changed it’s name (and web address) to IBleedDodgerBlue2.com. As it’s original name implied, the site’s administrator lives in New Mexico… Albuquerque, New Mexico to be more precise. His name is Evan Chavez and it doesn’t take rocket science to connect the dots here – Dodger fan + Dodger blog site + Albuquerque, New Mexico… yep, Evan is a die-hard Albuquerque Isotopes fan, which just so happens to be the Dodgers Triple-A affiliate in the historic Pacific Coast League.

I have to admit that the thought of changing web site names absolutely terrifies me and is something that Scott Harvey and I struggled over when we decided to add a blog site to our existing (and well established) forum site – our concern being that some may think that we were trying to copy the extremely popular True Blue LA site. But because we never even knew that there was a site called True Blue LA when we took out our domain name in 2009, we had absolutely no malice or intention of trying to copy anybody in our hearts and, as such, we decided to stay with our original web site domain name. That said, I can certainly understand why Evan made the decision to change the name of his New Mexico Fan site (which has no Dodger connotation to it) to IBleedDodgerBlue2 (which has every Dodger connotation to it).

In case you were wondering what the “2” in “IBleedDodgerBlue2” means, here’s your answer. (Photo credit – Evan Chavez)

After a couple of very pleasant email exchanges, Evan and I agreed to include our respective sites on each other’s blog roll so that our readers could access our respective sites with only one click. In addition to sharing links, Evan has also generously agreed to allow me to use his (excellent) Isotopes photographs (he attends most of their games), and in return he may use any of my photographs, if he so chooses.

In a business where a lot of words, thoughts and opinions are expressed but very little (if any) money is actually made, it is refreshing to once again be able to do some networking with a fellow blogger who shares the same passion that we all have here on ThinkBlueLA.com.

I encourage all of you to check out Evan’s site and believe that you will thoroughly enjoy it.