By PETER ABRAHAM
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

Alex Belth works in the finance department of a Fortune 500 company in Manhattan and lives happily with his girlfriend at their new home in Riverdale, N.Y. He's also at the forefront of a new breed of baseball fans - the bloggers.

Belth's personal Web site - "Bronx Banter" - draws as many as 3,000 visitors a day to read his essays on the Yankees. His daily Web log - or "blog" - is one of about 35 dedicated to the Yankees or Mets.

That's an approximate figure because new blogs start almost as quickly as others die off. Some are sophomoric prattle, but a surprisingly high percentage have well-written articles and opinions worthy of any newspaper, magazine or professional Web site.

"Blogs haven't hit the mainstream yet," said Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "I equate it to desktop publishing in the 1980s. A Macintosh computer could create a very professional-looking newsletter, and that was a powerful thing. Now you have this platform for people to address even narrow topics.

"This is just the start of it. Blogs are only going to get more popular."

Belth, who started his site 14 months ago, is an all-star in the baseball blogger community. His blog has featured in-depth interviews with Negro League great Buck O'Neil, author Roger Angell and filmmaker Ken Burns, along with links to the mainstream media and his own erudite commentary.

"It's a great exchange of ideas," said Belth, 32. "I love how much more I've learned about the game through doing this. Everybody has to set their own tone and find a niche. But once you do, it's very rewarding."

Belth and many other bloggers were first inspired by Aaron Gleeman, Jay Jaffe and David Pinto, the Willie, Mickey and the Duke of this fledgling genre. They were among the first and are now three of the best-read bloggers.

Jaffe, 34, started "Futility Infielder" three years ago. Once primarily a Yankees blog, he has branched out to cover all baseball.

"I developed a penchant for lengthy lunchtime e-mails involving stat-based baseball arguments. My friends invited me to leave them alone and start a blog," he said via e-mail. "The rest is history."

Jaffe and many other bloggers rely heavily on the study of baseball statistics - known as sabermetrics - to make their impassioned points. It's a natural mix of their love of baseball and technology.

"There's a sense that we represent a movement," said Cliff Corcoran, who writes "Clifford's Big Red Blog" from his home in Madison, N.J. "We're challenging traditional baseball analysis and coverage. ... The blogging community helps to make advanced statistical analysis palatable to the average fan."

Bloggers come from every walk of life. Larry Mahnken, 26, works in a bakery in a Rochester, N.Y., suburb and spends much of the day wondering what he will write that night on "The Replacement Level Yankees Weblog."

"Blogging doesn't interfere with my personal life. When there's a choice between blogging and friends or family, I'll choose the social life and let the blog go," he said. "I'm not that big a loser - yet."

Kaley Davis, a 39-year-old Mets fans from New York who now lives in Seattle, tends to the "Flushing Local." She stopped watching baseball after the 1994 strike but was lured back through her computer.

"It has become amazingly easy for an expatriate fan like myself to keep up with the game," she said.

Belth, who didn't know what a blog was a few years ago, wonders where the frontier lies.

"It's just a hobby for most of us and nobody is getting paid," he said. "But there is something going on here. We're having an impact on the discussion and that has to be taken seriously."

Baseball on the Web

• http://www.all-baseball.com/bronxbanter, Bronx Banter.

• http://cliffordsbrb.blogspot.com, Clifford's Big Red Blog.

• http://eastcoastagony.blogspot.com, East Coast Agony.

• http://www.flushinglocal.com, Flushing Local.

• http://yankeefan.blogspot.com, Replacement Level Yankees Weblog.

• http://www.futilityinfielder.com, The Futility Infielder.