Technically, it was actually yesterday but I had my daughter's folklorico dancing for Dia de los Muertos as well as her soccer game so I just got the chance to write something right now. It's been a magnificent ride beyond my wildest dreams full of tons of fun, friends and memories. I remember so much so fondly especially thinking back to that first AN Day when I got to meet several people including our very own baseballgirl.

Seriously though, the foundation for SB Nation was created when Athletics Nation launched and this site truly was the start of SB Nation. I consider November 6, 2003 to be the birthday of both AN and SBN. The essence of what I thought a good sports media product should do. To me it was about communicating with fans in an intelligent fashion and discussing, often in excruciating detail, every single thing that our favorite team does. To me, there were some great beat reporters out there, but the columnists and anyone who gave you A's opinion was often ignorant and/or just plain wrong. I felt like someone could do it better and just be up front about being a fan and passionate about the green and gold.

So while I was inspired to do it, don't get me wrong, I also had my selfish reasons which was largely to keep myself from driving my wife to wanting to divorce me chatting her ear off about the A's. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do it for a long time so I initially started the site as a typepad site. And lo and behold, people started showing up almost immediately. I figured I'd probably just be talking to myself since the term "blog" was relatively new in 2003. Sure there were blogs in tech and politics, but sports hadn't really broken through just yet.

Any way, the growth of SB Nation has been tremendous over the past few years which is fantastic, but it's also had an unfortunate consequence and that's taking me away from AN which was and continues to be my first love. I'm insanely fired up about about this upcoming offseason for the A's and I find myself hanging out on AN (probably more often than I should) these days quite frequently. Sure I don't comment as much, but the content and people here remain first rate and it continues to be one of the biggest anchors in the SB Nation network.

In order to celebrate that 7th birthday (do blogs get a seven-year itch and what is seven years old in blog years - 49 or is it more like three times the number so more like 21?), I should have an interview with Lew Wolff this week. I sat down with him late last week at his office down here in LA to mostly discuss the possible San Jose move as well as many other things, including how he views the A's going into 2011.

Oh and one last thing. The highlight for the A's since AN launched was the ALCS appearance in 2006. Let's take that one step further this year, yes?

Thanks to Nico, baseballgirl, Dan, Emperor Nobody, Jeff and Don as well as anyone else who has ever contributed to this great community. I couldn't ask for a better group of people because they don't exist.