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Did you know MLB has an App Game that Could Enable You to Win $5.6 Million?

April 17, 2012 by

A few weeks ago we looked at a number of apps that Major League Baseball has made available to fans, including the ever popular MLB.com AT Bat 12 as well as the recently released At the Ballpark, both of which have been very well received.

What I missed was the app Full Count that delivers streaming content and the fact that the game that fans can participate in to try and break Joe DiMaggio’s all-time consecutive hit streak is not only an app but has a $5.6 million prize, so a short comment on both is worthwhile.

Full Count is an app that was developed in conjunction with Yahoo! Sports and it provides a range of features including up to the minute player and team stats, scores, live look-ins at key plays and in-game progress video highlights.

A user can pause a video and rewind it if they so desire and they can follow an embedded twitter feed that includes ones from analysts, commentators and MLB.com insiders. The program is free and can be accessed on iPads, iPhones and on PCs. This looks to me like the second best thing to watching a game at work.

The second app is called MLB.com Beat the Streak presented by Scotts and it involves an effort by fans to participate, but that have the potential to win a $5.6 million grand prize. To play you pick one or two players from a list supplied by MLB on a daily basis. If your player gets a hit on the first day you have the start of a streak. You keep on selecting for as many days as your players keep you in the game, if you have a day with no hits you are set back to zero, but can start again.

There is no limit to how many times you select any individual player, and you can make selections up to 10 days in advance, a boon to those with weekend duties or travel obligations. The contest ends with the end of the 2012 regular season. The first to reach 57 consecutive games wins.

To play you need to register at www.mlb.com/bts or www.mlb.com/fantasy and then download the app, which is currently for iPhones, iPod Touch and iPads only.

This strikes me as a great way to keep fans not only engaged but actively following all players to ensure that they have a hot hand and pay attention to what pitchers their selected hitters will be facing.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Contests, Fantasy Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Smartphone, Twitter, Yahoo Tagged With: ,

Brandon Phillips Says Twitter Helps his Game

April 16, 2012 by

Baseball managers from Little League to the major leagues often warn their players about the dangers of distractions and how it will impact their performance on the field-the only thing that matters to a manager.

Well the Cincinnati Reds’ All-Star second baseman Brandon Phillips claims that Twitter (@DatDudeBP) is not only not a distraction, but that his heavy use of it has helped his game last season. For the record last year he hit .300, scored 94 runs and had 82 runs batted in and won a Silver Slugger award..

Phillips said on the Jim Rome show that the technology helped him both personally with all of the positive feedback and with an effort by himself to only say positive things on his feed. But he even found that the haters, ones who said that he would not accomplish anything helped to motivate him to remain focused on the field.

From the sound clip that is linked it is obvious that he enjoys the interaction with fans and that it has helped him open up to fans, and it has led to him providing his own giveaways at the ballpark.

On the flip side there is always Tim McCarver, the Fox Sports baseball announcer who does not like any form of social media at all. In a recent interview he went so far as to say that nothing is as disturbing as social media. When not making these remarks he is presumably outside telling people to get off his lawn.

Hopefully this will be a trend that more athletes follow. A lot have engaging personalities but remain distant from fans for a huge variety of reasons, including ‘haters’ as Phillips said. This allows them to reach out and really develop new bonds for fans and athletes both on and off teams that they root for.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Cincinnati, Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, Twitter Tagged With: ,

NASCAR Under the Lights at Samsung Mobile 500 in Texas

April 13, 2012 by

LAST RACE
The results were either interesting or disappointing from Martinsville’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 two weeks ago, depending on who you are rooting for and what you look for in a race. The race had its fill of last minute screw ups including last lap stalling, crashes and over time. When the dust and smoke had settled, but probably not the tempers, Ryan Newman was the victor.
The Top 5 Finishers

Ryan Newman
AJ Allmendinger
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Matt Kenseth
Martin Truex Jr.

THIS WEEKEND
Now the circuit has moved on to Texas for the Samsung Mobile 500 that will take place on the 1.5 mile oval track at Texas Motor Speedway. A quick reminder, the Nationwide race will be tonight (Friday) and the Sprint race is tomorrow night under the lights. I hope none of the Nationwide drivers are superstitious about racing on Friday the 13th!

Last year Matt Kenseth finally ended a streak of also-rans at the track by taking hoe the checkered flag, and with his solid performance last week has to be considered a top contender here again. In the Sprint Cup standings the drivers are still very bunched up at the top, with four tied for third place but the makeup of the drivers and teams has remained relatively stable from the last race.

BROADCAST
Sat. 7PM ET on Fox

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW
I occasionally tap in to individual drivers twitter feeds but need to do so more often as some have very interesting things to sday, while others often sound like a PR team is pushing the comments out. Any recommendations on who to follow?
@NASCAR-Official NASCAR feed
@TXMotorspeedway-Texas Motor Speedway Official feed
@TMSTotalAccess-Brad Gillie-Texas MS All Access show
@NASCARONFOX-Fox Sports feed
@AllWaltrip-3 Time NASCAR Champ and Fox announcer

SPRINT LEADERBOARD-Race 6-36
1) Greg Biffle
2) Dale Earnhardt Jr. -6
3) Tony Stewert -12
4) Matt Kenseth -12
5) Kevin Harvick -12
6) Martin Truex Jr. -12

For the Nationwide O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 race the fastest lap was turned in by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. with a speed of 179.611 miles per hour in one of his practice laps. There will be an additional hour of practice this morning a few hours prior to the start of the race. The four top positions following Stenhouse Jr. are filled by Elliott Sadler, Paul Menard, Kasey Kahne and Joey Logano.
Last year the race was won by Carl Edwards, a feat that marketed a repeat performance by the driver as he won the event the previous year as well.

NATIONWIDE LEADERBOARD-
1) Elliott Stadler 214
2) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -18 behind
3) Austin Dillon -27 behind
4) Trevor Bayne -34 behind
5) Sam Hornish Jr. -54 behind

Hall of Fame Vote 2013-Your Vote Counts!
NASCAR has released its list of nominees for election into its Hall of Fame for 2013, with a slate of 25 people which will be honed down to five lucky people that will be honored by being selected for induction.

We are not going to list them all, you can just hop over to the site and see all of the people, with a succinct mentioning of why they deserve to be on the list. Of more interest to fans is that the can have a say by voting on the Class of 2013, so as they say in Chicago “Vote early and vote often.”

Filed Under: Fox Sports, NASCAR, Texas Motor Speedway, Twitter Tagged With: ,

Twitter Fans of Bubba Watson’s Masters Victory Can Win Too — From Motorola

April 10, 2012 by

Bubba Watson did not just win the Masters and its impressive trophy and the fabled green jacket but he also stands to make 10 Twitter followers winners as well due to his partnership with Motorola Mobility and its recently introduced MotoActv Golf Watch.

Watson had just announced his partnership with the company prior to the event and so to celebrate both the partnership and Watson’s achievement Motorola has launched a program that will enable 10 fans to be among the first to try out the Golf Watch.

To participate all a user needs to do is follow @MOTOACTV and retweet #10under, which represents his score for those of you who do not know, for a chance to win one of the Golf Editions of the MotoActv,.

The golf watch, which sells for $299.99, enables users to track and measure a number of factors in their golf game, including providing 20,000 course layouts, serving as a virtual caddie and providing distances to front, middle and back of greens.

Filed Under: Apps, Contests, Golf, Motorola, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

MLB Continues Strong Push in Social Media

April 6, 2012 by

While doing basic baseball research, i.e. watching a bunch of Opening Day games on television, I noticed a funny thing happening on Twitter, as a huge number of postings were coming with the #MLBTVme hastag.

The hastag is apparently part of a bigger effort to promote MLB’s MLB.TV according to a number of sources, which all seem to lead back to Mashable. The official site for MLB.TV had no press release on this topic, at least one that is easily found.

Apparently what is happening is that MLB’s @MLB account tweeted a number of trivia questions, and fans that answered correctly were entered into a drawing for a number of nice prizes including iPad and Xbox 360s.

The network used a very clever ploy to get the event out in front of fans that use Twitter. The longer the hastag trended at Twitter’s national and global trending charts the more prizes were awarded to fans that participated. Since it was a trivial contest, and most baseball fans that I know love baseball trivia (and most other forms) this was sure to be a hit.

According to the article MLB has also launched a series of social media correspondents at each of the ballparks, and if you are interested in what it takes to be one some of the job listings are still available online. There will also be a tumblr and pinterest accounts for each team.

I was amazed at the range of additional offerings that MLB has for fans. While I dig around at its site fairly regularly, there were a number of offerings that I was not aware of including a variety of contests, including one where fans pick a player a day and see if they can get a hit with each one until they pass Joe DiMaggio’s famous hit streak.

In addition, for those of you that like to follow individual players on Twitter, here is a pretty good list, courtesy of the MLBLogs Network of almost 300 MLB players that have twitter accounts as well as a few additional important baseball hashtags that you might want to follow.

As we have noted n the past MLB has been very aggressive in pushing all forms of social media and interactive content in the last decade and this is a extremely nice push. Fans love their teams and can now show it in additional ways, helping to strengthen the bond between them, while at the same time rewarding the fans for participating.

Filed Under: Apps, Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Contests, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, Mashable, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: ,

Rangers Catcher Videos Tornado’s Fury at Ballpark

April 4, 2012 by

While preparing for last night’s exhibition game against the Mexican City Diablos Rojos, Texas Rangers bullpen catcher Zach Zaneski caught a bit more than he expected- a video of the effect that the numerous tornadoes that swept through Dallas leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

The video then went worldwide when regular catcher Mike Napoli tweeted a version of the video which showed the impact the storm was having at the pall park including the wind and rain driving a tarp across the field.

The weather service reported that there was anywhere from six to 12 tornadoes that set down in the North Texas area around Dallas with a pair of them sweeping through the city, tossing big rigs around and destroying most everything in their path.

Even with all of the destruction and parts of the city recovering the teams went on to play the game with the Rangers beating the Diablos Rojos 14-3. Here is a set of videos including the one from Zaneski showing the storms impact in the city.

Filed Under: Baseball, ESPN, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, Sports Social Media, Texas Rangers, Twitter Tagged With: , ,
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