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Baseball Adds Instagram to its Team

July 19, 2012 by 3 Comments

Major League Baseball is teaming with Instagram to show photos and images that come directly from the teams, enabling fans that are not at events to get a feel for the game, players and fans in attendance.

The concept is very simple but can be very compelling as well. Using @MLBOfficial as its tag line MLB teams will be posting photos from their games as well as behind the scenes images for others to view. Instagram says that MLB is the first professional league to do so.

Currently the teams that are already on board for the program include: SF Giants (@sfgiants), NY Yankees (@yankees), LA Dodgers (@dodgers) Atlanta Braves (@braves), Texas Rangers (@rangers), Seattle Mariners (@seattlemariners), LA Angels (@angels), and the Kansas City Royals (@kcroyals). Instagram said that eventually all MLB teams will be launching accounts.

A quick look over at the SF Giants official account finds that there are 339 photos and 41,530 followers. Note that you have to be an Instagram user to view the images at its site. However a quick visit to the Giants site can give you fan photos.

In the past a huge number of fans of teams have posted images of their teams and players. According to a recent piece in Mashable there had been a 400% increase in Instagram photo postings from major league ball parks compared to the entire 2011 season, with more than 40,000 posted at the time of the piece.

We have long thought that MLB was an organization that appears to really understand how to reach out to fans at multiple levels. It has developed mobile apps to enable you to follow games on mobile devices, is creating high grade stadium wireless networks and constantly launches games and contests to keep fans engaged.

I suspect that this will both help draw more fans to the site to view baseball pictures and also contribute additional images to the mix. I certainly hope that other pro and amateur sports follow this lead because they have the ability to get images that regular fans will not.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Facebook, Instagram, iOS, Los ANgeles Angeles of Anaheim, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League Baseball, New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers Tagged With: ,

MLB Looks at More Replays, Changes to Home Run Derby Selection

July 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For any fan that tuned into MLB’s Home Run Derby on Monday night they might have wondered about all of the booing. It seems that every time that Robinson Cano, captain of the American Leagues’ team of home run hitters came to bat the Kansas City crowd booed.

This was basically a repeat, albeit with different players, from last year when Prince Fielder, then the captain of the National League team was booed often and loudly by the Diamondback partisans at the event in Phoenix.

In both cases the captain’s sins in the eyes of the fans was in not picking a home town favorite among the selection for the home run hitting squad. While it might make sense to go with the strongest team the derby really is an individual event, with no team win but rather an individual player taking home the title.

MLB’s commissioner, Bud Selig, obviously does not like to hear booing at an event designed to showcase baseball and so told the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) that he was looking at changing the selection process by simply adding a “Hometown” all-star to the hitting squad.

The fact that next years’ game will be in the Met’s Citi Field in New York and without a Met on the team might cause a new record in boo volume to be set might have had something to do with his decision. Still it is not yet final and so we will have to wait and see if this becomes permanent.

The commissioner also talked about the future of replay in baseball during the All-Star break and said that it will be expanded, but not by much. Baseball is looking to add balls hit down the foul line and balls that are trapped in the outfield. This expansion is already covered in the basic agreement between MLB and the players association.

Filed Under: All Star Game, Baseball, Major League Baseball Tagged With:

The Home Run Derby’s Lineup is Set for Monday

July 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The MLB All-Star Game has been preceded by a home run derby, now officially called the 2012 State Farm Home Run Derby, in a variety of forms since its introduction in 1985 and while I only occasionally watch it, I am always interested in the lineup.

The contest is pretty basic; there are two four man teams, one representing the National League and one the American League. Each player gets ten outs per round with a total of three rounds. Any swing that is not a home run is an out and the top four from the first round advance to the second.

If there is a tie there is a five swing playoff to see who advances. The combined totals of the first and second round determine which two players make it to the third round, but in the final round it is only home runs hit in that round that count for the crown.

This year the National League team is captained by the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp and will include three first time participants, the Rockies’ Carlos Gonzalez, the Cardinals’ Carlos Beltran and the Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton. The career home run totals for the players are interesting to look at, with Beltran leading with 322 followed by Kemp’s 140, Gonzalez’ 94 and then Stanton’s 75.

For the American League the team is lead by Yankee Robinson Cano and includes the Angles’ Mark Trumbo, Detroits’ Prince Fielder and Toronto’s Jose Bautista. The AL team seems to have the advantage I terms of career home runs with 164, 49, 232 and 182 respectively. It also has two past winners of the competition in Cano and Fielder. The event will be played at Kansas City Royal’s Kauffman Stadium on Monday July 9, and will be telecast by ESPN at 8 pm ET.

In my mind this is the highlight of the pre-All-Star events but there are a number of other events taking place including a All-Star Futures game with up and coming prospects and a Legends & Celebrities softball game.

Filed Under: All Star Game, Baseball, ESPN, Major League Baseball Tagged With: ,

Friday Grab Bag: Dolphins with iPads, New NFL Game Times

June 29, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Miami Dolphins are the latest NFL team to jump on the iPad train as the team has adopted the tablets as an alternative to the huge binders that had been the traditional form of NFL playbooks. The team joins a growing number of NFL teams that have taken this approach including the Denver Broncos, Tampa Bay Bucs and the Green Bay Packers.

However the Dolphins are also apparently taking a hard line on players’ usage of the tablets. While they can surf the Internet to some degree, they will be fined as much as $10,000 for access unauthorized sites such as YouTube and Twitter, according to ProFootballTalk.

Microsoft buys Yammer for $1.2 billion
Microsoft has added corporate social networking developer Yammer Inc. into its corporate embrace with its $1.2 billion purchase of the startup. The company said that it intends to incorporate the tools, which have a Facebook quality, into its Microsoft Office group.

Yammer has seen strong acceptance to its technology and has 200,000 companies using its tools including major players such as Ford Motor Co.

Mobile users increasingly access Internet
The Pew Internet & American Life project has published an interesting study on the use of mobile phone use for Internet browsing and purchases. It found that 17% of cell phone owners use the phone as their primary device for cruising the Internet, and often their only tool used for accessing it.

The study found that 88% of US adults have a cell phone and that of these 55% of them use the phone to go online, a notable increase from the 31% Pew found when it last did a similar study in 2009.

NFL moves late kickoffs back 10 minutes
The NFL has moved the opening kickoffs for the late afternoon games from 4:15 ET start to 4:25. The move will help eliminate the overlap that occasionally occurs when the early game runs long, something that often seems to happen if the second game is the one that you have been waiting all day to watch.

This should also help now that the new overtime rules are in effect that could also lead to more overtime games as it will now make more sense for a coach to go for a tie in the waning moments of the game knowing that he has a shot at getting the ball and scoring in OT.

RIM delays smartphone after bad quarter
Beleaguered smartphone developer Research in Motion has reported that it had a worse than expected quarter with revenue at $2.8 billion with a loss of $518 million, its shipment of its flagship BlackBerry phones was only 7.8 million, down 41% from the same period a year ago.

The company plans to slash 5,000 jobs but still expects to have another bad quarter, predicting a loss for the current one as well. It has delayed the delivery of its next generation phone, the BlackBerry 10, until the first quarter of next year.

Judge halts Samsung Galaxy Sales in US
Apple won its latest round against rival Samsung when US District Judge Lucy Koh reversed her previous position and granted Apple’s request to prohibit Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States.

She said in the ruling that Samsung does not have the right to flood the market with products that infringe (presumably on Apple patents). Apple needs to post a $2.6 million bond in case the injunction is later to be found to be incorrect and so pay for damages inflicted on Samsung.

Samsung has not taken the ruling lying down and has already appealed. It has asked that the US District Court of Northern California suspend the order pending an appeal.

iPhone hits 5th anniversary
In June 2007 Apple launched its iPhone and has not had a need to look back as it has helped propel Apple to the powerful position it holds today as a company. In the five years of its life the phone has generated an estimated $150 billion in revenue, just from hardware sales, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics.

Then of course there is the sale of peripherals, apps, software and services. Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple has shipped 250 million iPhones globally in that time.

Tablets usage as second TV continues to grow
NPD DisplaySearch’s latest Global TV Replacement Study has found that the use of tablets as a platform for viewing television and video has doubled over the last year, in part the usage has been driven by the overall growth of tablet sales, according to the survey.

While tablet usage as a second screen has edged to over 10% of consumers using one for viewing, it still has a ways to go to reach the level of laptops or desktop computers, which over 40% of consumers say they use for viewing purposes.

The All-Star Selection show is this weekend
For baseball fans the results of their ballet box stuffing will be found this Sunday when TBS hosts the section show at 1 pm ET. Still the show will not have the final rosters as MLB will then have five players from each league that fans can vote for to put one last person on the each team. The winner of the Final Ballot will be announced on next Thursday, July 5.

Filed Under: All Star Game, Apple, Baseball, Denver Broncos, iPad, iPhone, Lawsuit, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, NFL, PlayerLync, ProFootballTalk, Samsung, Tablets, TBS Tagged With: , , ,

Lawsuit Seeks to Change MLB’s Blackout Policy

June 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

As a general rule I think that MLB does a great job connecting to fans in the digital age. It has contests, apps and a range of programs that make it easy to follow your team, and others, from your phone, computer and television.

The one area that it seems to be in the dark ages on is in its blackout policy, which seems to give teams huge latitude in what areas they can claim as their own and prevent the broadcasting of games there, using MLB.TV

We mentioned it briefly several months ago when a post from a poor fan in Hawaii noted that despite the presence of the Pacific Ocean, which most would believe hinder any sudden decision to drop in on a ball game, he was blacked out from watching games from nine different teams including ones as far away as Texas.

Now a group has filed a class action lawsuit claiming that MLB is in violation of the Sherman Act, according to a nice piece on the suit by Yahoo Sports Jeff Passan who notes that Bud Selig, MLB’s commissioner promised to fix the problem six years ago.

The issue is that baseball gains so much from the broadcast rights from regional sports networks and the networks want exclusive rights in exchange for the millions they hand over to the teams. However it does seem odd that it has allowed some networks to claim areas that are a time zone or more away, and that do not carry the networks broadcasting.

With its hard to predict what the result of this case will be, and with baseball’s antitrust exemption it would be hard to bet against them winning, but it would be nice if it actually did make some changes so that fans could see games that they want to.

Filed Under: Baseball, Lawsuit, Major League Baseball Tagged With:

Another day, another MLB Contest

June 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I was watching a ball game the other day and on came an ad that featured Cal Ripken Jr. I was in a local watering hole and so could not hear what he was saying as he snagged foul ball after foul ball as a spectator in the stands (and he is still wearing his jersey)

Then it flashed up that this was a new contest from Major League Baseball called “Stay in the Game Sweepstakes.” This is the kind of sweepstakes that I like, just enter and cross your fingers, so it is a level playing field for me.

The event is cosponsored by One A Day vitamins as well as the Cal Ripken Jr. and the purpose of the promotion appears to encourage people to stay in shape, particularly as they get older, and that if you have not been exercising it is not too late to start, judging by the accompanying video.

The One a Day partner is also donating to Cal Ripken Sr.’s Foundation that brings baseball and softball programs to disadvantaged youths in America and also helps teach them life lessons. There is nothing on the web page that exactly explains the purpose of the promotion, which is too bad, particularly if it is for a good cause.

The prizes look pretty good- first place is a round trip for five to the 2013 MLB All-Star Game with Cal Ripken Jr. That will include round trip airfare, 5 VIP gift bags, 3 night stay for you and your posse, $500 in cash as well as tickets to the 2013 MLB Home Run Derby. Each week prior to the awarding of the grand prize a $100 gift card that can be used on the MLB web site will be awarded so you too can have a Cal Ripken Jr. jersey if you so wish! Or the classic Billy Ripken baseball card.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Cal Ripken Jr., Contests, Major League Baseball Tagged With:
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