In the first quarter of this Major League Baseball season, you might have:
• Bought one of those Yankees customized home jerseys that features the commemorative All-Star Game logo patch on one sleeve and Yankee Stadium logo patch on the other -- the hottest-selling item right now at the MLB.com Shop.
• Ordered those increasingly popular "All You Can Eat" tickets specials from the Dodgers' or Pirates' club sites, spent hours on your home computer planning summer trips and clicking around your team's online ticket center, and turned to StubHub when you found that seats for an upcoming game were scarce.
• Showed off your mobile phone to friends just so they would know that Asdrubal Cabrera's unassisted triple play or Kosuke Fukudome's big hit had just showed up as a Video Alert moments after the play happened.
• Watched your favorite team live over your computer with MLB.TV, contributing to the record number of signups for that service.
• Entered this unprecedented early-season array of major contests and sweepstakes for the chance to win unreal prizes like a million bucks or trip giveaways to see the Midsummer Classic or a game at the 2008 World Series.
• Stopped and thought how much fun it is to be a baseball fan in the digital world.
At the quarter mark of this Major League Baseball season, fans are well on their way toward a fifth consecutive overall attendance record and demonstrating again how technology changed the whole experience for the better. You saw the words "Dig In" splashed all over MLB.com around Opening Day, and you did just that. As another certain summer of competitive balance unfolds and Lance Berkman makes an early bid for a Triple Crown, here is what's hot among your peers:
MLB.com Mobile Video Alerts.
Brad Spahr is a lifelong Cardinals fan living in Los Angeles. Originally from Red Bud, Ill., a small town outside of St. Louis, he has gone to Cardinals games for as long as he can remember. "My grandparents have had season tickets since the days of Sportsman's Park," Spahr explained via email, "so Cardinal history goes back a long way in my family."
After moving to L.A., he became an MLB.TV subscriber so he could follow his Redbirds. This year, Spahr added Video Alerts, using his Sprint wireless service. Clips are cut and sent about three minutes after the play occurs. You typically get up to five videos per game, chosen by MLB.com editors, available on select Verizon, AT&T and Sprint handhelds including smart phones. For $3.99, fans like Spahr get text and video alerts if they have a phone capable of streaming video. The iPhone is now supported as well.
"I am a huge fan of the Video Alerts service," he said. "The Cardinals are off to an unexpectedly hot start this year, and now I can watch key plays on my cell phone within minutes of the play happening in the game. My schedule keeps me busy and I often can't be at a computer or television when the Cardinals are playing.
"My favorite mobile moment of the season was last week when I got an alert that said, 'Ankiel shows off his arm' -- with a link to a video clip of Rick Ankiel gunning down a runner at third from center field in a huge inning-ending double play. That play has since become not only the play of the week, but one of the top plays of the year. To have access to that clip on my cell phone, within minutes of it happening, is remarkable."
To get your Video Alerts, just sign up by texting "GET Club name" to 65246. For example, if you are a Mets fan, you send the text "get mets" to 65246. Once you sign up for the text alerts, MLB.com will send eligible fans a second text message offering the Video Alerts service. The price hasn't changed, so this was a throw-in. As always, you can manage your Team Alert selections in the "m-dash" (Mobile Dashboard).
Ten ways to win
There is a definite trend happening around MLB.com and it has to do with you. It seems like every day brings a new major sweepstakes or contest to these pages, usually tied to an important fan-participation element, and the prizes are huge. In past years, these tend to swell up in late summer as the pennant races take shape. It has something to do with more people than ever following Major League Baseball.
Just to help your own chances, here's a top 10 (alphabetically) you should enter:
• Bank of America All-Star Game Sweepstakes. Win a trip to the 2008 All-Star Game.
• Beat the Streak presented by Mitchum. Win $1 million. That's right.
• Chevy MLB World Series Sweepstakes. Win 2008 World Series tickets and All-Star Game Shop prizes.
• Indiana Jones Legends Sweepstakes. Win a trip to see your favorite legend on screen and on the field.
• Monster's All-Star Game Experience. Win a trip to New York for the 2008 All-Star Week, spending cash, on-field press credentials and your own special MLBlog. Vote first.
• Palm Centro Get To The Game Sweepstakes. Win a trip to the 2008 All-Star Game.
• Pepsi Clutch Performer Sweepstakes. Win a trip to the 2009 All-Star Game.
• Rookie of the Month Award presented by Gillette. Vote and win tickets to the 2008 All-Star Game or a 2008 World Series game.
• State Farm Call Your Shot Sweepstakes. Win a trip to the 2008 All-Star Week, then stand at home plate and tell David Ortiz where to hit one out before the State Farm Home Run Derby. You could win a Chevy Tahoe hybrid.
• Take Me Out To The Ball Game Video Contest presented by Baby Ruth. Upload your version now and you could sing that song in the seventh-inning stretch July 15 at Yankee Stadium.
MLB.TV and MLB.TV Premium
MLB.TV has reached unprecedented levels so far this season. During the first two games of this season alone, MLB.TV delivered more than 1.7 million live game video streams and adding nearly 36,000 subscribers. To make it even more irresistible, the price was just lowered this past week. It's now $14.95 a month or $79.95 a year for MLB.TV, and $19.95 a month and $109.95 a year for MLB.TV Premium. Both are great, both come with MLB.com Gameday Audio, and the latter comes with special features including TV-quality picture capability and the MLB.TV Mosaic app that lets you see up to six live games simultaneously. It's become a staple of modern baseball fan life.
Sales and patches
The MLB.com Shop just introduced a Tee and Cap Sale on Tuesday, so you can buy one and get the second half off. This is the perfect time to load up on summer gear to wear to the ballpark, like The Vote T-shirts by Majestic Athletic or On Par Ball Marker Adjustable Caps from New Era.
What's been hot in the first quarter of this season the Shop? Think All-Star Game and patches. After that aforementioned Yankees jersey, the top five is rounded out by: Dodgers Authentic Personalized COOL BASE Jersey with 50th Anniversary Patch; Yankees Authentic Game Performance 59FIFTY On-Field Cap with 2008 All-Star Patch; Yankees Authentic Therma Base Premier Road Jacket; and Mets Authentic Johan Santana Home Jersey with 2008 Shea Stadium Commemorative Patch.
Yes, that's a lot of New York. But both stadiums are on the way out, an All-Star Game is on the way in, and that's representative of what fans have craved most the first quarter. Those same items are available for other clubs, and just take one look at the ballparks and you can see what's in for summer fashion. The Shop is the easiest place to get it.
MLB.com Gameday
Gameday is more addictive so far in 2008, if anything. The 750 players on Major League rosters are the main reason why, of course. Fans worldwide sit there with their app on the desktop and wait to see where that next pitch shows up in the virtual strike zone, and it is surrounded by real-time data such as the live box, the play-by-play, and the Pitch-f/x technology to provide speed and trajectory in the pitch sequence. You've watched it incorporate Real Time Highlights, you've seen it integrate with text like in-depth Game Previews, and it has applied your constructive input via the Gameday blog. Now get ready for more because Cory Schwartz, MLB.com's director of statistics and a familiar face of fantasy analysis on this site, says another key addition is coming soon.
"We tweaked the footprint considerably so Gameday would fit better on the user's screen, but without having any less information," Schwartz said. "We tweaked the pitch type software so the results are much more accurate now. And the treatment of the in-game videos has gotten a lot of love and now looks spectacular, in my humble opinion. 3D pitch displays will be rolled out near the end of the month and are insane."
Registration
Around the clock every day, fans continue to register at their favorite club site for a variety of benefits. It's free and easy, and it is the gateway to many things that happen during the course of the year -- from ticketing and Shop offers to contest prizes to All-Star voting to blogging and posting messages to subscription signups and more.
Scoreboard, Standings, Stats, Schedule
The four S's are still the bread-and-butter for the typical baseball fan. Nothing changed about that in the first quarter of this season. More people than ever wanted to know the score, wanted to shake their head over the standings, wanted to check on stats for their fantasy rosters or to see how long Chipper Jones can stay above .400, or to check that schedule. Life kind of revolves around the four S's much of the time.
Hal Bodley
A lot of people have noticed during the first quarter of this season that the much-read and much-respected baseball writer is on our team now -- along with those 30 team beat writers who have held the attention of the average fan during this first quarter as well.
Blogging for free
On Opening Day, MLB Advanced Media removed the subscription cost for its MLBlogs community, and there have been more blogs created in this first quarter than there were the first three years of MLBlogs. Fans like you are starting up MLBlogs around the clock, and then using them for a wide variety of reasons -- some just to chronicle every game of the season like the pros, some to let you know if the roof is open or closed, and some to present great photography. It's where you can blog alongside people like Mark DeRosa, top draft prospect Brett Wallace of Arizona State, Bengie Molina, Jeff Francoeur, the Phillies Ballgirls, Alyssa Milano, the Tigers front office.
Will that Tigers blog be telling a fan base later this year about how to get playoff tickets? Or is Detroit's tough first quarter a telltale sign? Will fans like Brad Spahr still be loving those daily Video Alerts later this summer in the heat of a pennant race? Will everyone in the crowd at Yankee Stadium on July 15 be wearing one of those customized jerseys with the two logo patches? Will you be the one who wins one of those amazing sweepstakes prizes and perhaps going to the All-Star Game or World Series for free?
There are so many questions still to be answered.
There is such a long summer and fall of baseball ahead.
It's a good thing fans have technology to make it even more fun.
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