$20 ONE-YEAR MEMBERSHIPS.

And let's be real here. It's not like the Base Ball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) is setting the world on fire with its selections lately.

Perhaps more importantly, the BBWAA goes out of its way to keep fresh voices at bay. Required is ten years of paid membership for writers to earn a Cooperstown vote. We're talking multiples of thousands of dollars, plus a wait that's longer than most marriages.

The BBWAA's website sports an almost unreadable set of guidelines, and includes a constitution. Until recently, rules established that unless a publication was attached to a newspaper with an actual printed edition, Internet writers were excluded.

With dailies dropping like flies in the vicinity of Andruw Jones, the BBWAA has adjusted. A little, and slowly. The hoops an Internet writer has to jump through are too many and too narrow. So we thought we'd be proactive, and create an alternative. It's time.

The IBWAA will send out ballots similar to and around the same time as the traditional writers union, we'll use the same deadlines, and each writer will get one vote. We'll water our little association and watch it grow.

We will not limit the amount of entries per publication, we will encourage comments, and we'll publish the results before the old guys do. And we will publicize the hell out of it. In fact, it's an objective of ours to have media outlets publishing our vote results in a news cycle ahead of the BBWAA....think People's Choice Awards before the Oscars. Kind of.

In addition to the annual Hall of Fame elections, we'll count ballots for Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year, Executive of the Year, and Comeback Player of the Year. In each case, we'll announce the winner before the BBWAA.

While baseball's All-Star Game rosters aren't the purview of the old writers association, we'll tally members choices for the American and National league teams in July anyway, releasing our picks ahead of Major League Baseball's. Again, we'll publicize like there's no tomorrow.

We'll have a website, www.InternetBaseballWriters.com, in the coming months, we'll elect officers (or maybe we won't - these types of determinations will be made by the members), and we'll work within our means, collecting only modest dues. We'll promote our members, their publications, and just generally support each other's efforts.

All Internet baseball writers are welcome. Those with his or her own baseball website of any kind or scope are invited to join, as are those who contribute the written word anywhere within the baseball blogosphere.

All suggestions for association activities are very much welcome.

Group discounts and scholarships available. Please don't hesitate to ask.

For more info, contact Howard Cole, baseballsavvy@aol.com.