ThEvolution Of Baseball

Chimp Change This season, there's a lot that's new for devoted fans.

Being a baseball fan in 2002 has become complicated. The marriage of the national pastime (baseball) and the international pastime (Web surfing) has unleashed so many other—and often better—ways to enjoy the sport that fans no longer have to do anything as mundane as, say, go to the ballpark.

Missed last night's SportsCenter? Design and watch your own customized highlight reel. Want to know how your fantasy-league players are doing, in real time, down to every ball and strike? Have the info sent automatically to your Palm or cell phone. And even going to the stadium doesn't mean shedding your tech-loving ways: Just order a beer and dog from your seat with a Pocket PC. "Technology allows every fan to tell us what they want and how

they want it," says Bob Bowman, president and CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which operates MLB.com. "If we don't give something for someone every day, we're doing something wrong."

Customizable and Condensed Games

MLB.com is quickly becoming as vital for wired fans as television itself. Its decision not to license out its video and audio for Web use is starting to look prescient rather than backward—the league remains the sole provider of customizable game clips, which means it can go far beyond the standard fare of news, stats, and fantasy leagues provided by MSN: ESPN [espn.com], CBS SportsLine.com [sportsline.com], and other major sports hubs. Fans no longer have to watch TV anchors blather through 28 minutes of golf and X Games results to see a few plays from their team's outing. By anteing up about $12 for a year's subscription to MLB.com's Custom Cuts service, you can create your own reel of whatever you want within an hour after the game. Or you can opt to have your private highlight reel uploaded to your computer overnight, for morning viewing.

If you've got some (but not much) more time on your hands, you might try MLB.com Condensed Games. This new service takes baseball's hours-long amble and condenses it into a tight 20-minute video sprint that's available to fans 90 minutes after the completion of every game. Talk about progress.

The site plans many other new moves for the 2002 season. Last year, fans could listen to the radio feed of any game nationwide for a season subscription cost of $9.95; this year's service will run a few dollars more but will offer new features. The best of the new breed are the cell phone audio feeds, which turn your phone into an instant radio—especially cool if it has a good speakerphone. (Thankfully, ball games take place mostly on nights and weekends, meaning you can finally use all those free minutes.) Your BlackBerry or Web-enabled handheld or cell phone can also receive customized data—i.e., your fantasy players' at-bats—live or after the game.

There are, of course, limits to this techno wonderland. While you may one day be able to get the full-on customized streaming video treatment over your handheld, don't expect it this season. "The notion of video over wireless devices is not something I see right now; it will be much more audio- and text-based," says Bowman, whose site recorded 220 million visits last year, three times as many as Major League Baseball's stadiums themselves. But, he adds, "as broadband becomes more prevalent, it's tailor-made for uses like that."

Beaming Fans and Better Views

What appears not to be in demand is the much-hyped ChoiceSeat, stadium consoles with touch screens that dished out stats and instant replays through different camera angles but ultimately proved superfluous for fans at live events. (ChoiceSeat went bankrupt last year.)

But that doesn't mean stadiums aren't making great strides. At Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco, fans can download lineups, stats, and scorecards into their Palm handhelds at three beaming kiosks. Safeco Field in Seattle has interactive predict-the-play and trivia games that fans can play through their WAP-enabled phones. At Coors Field in Denver, 5,000 seats will have binoculars available behind a door that can be unlocked through a wireless system run by Binocs Systems Corp., a company based in Kalispell, Montana. Binocs also plans to have that local network feed game data, video clips, and more to fans who rent or bring their own Pocket PCs. Tony Kavanagh, VP of sales and marketing at Binocs, says ChoiceSeat's fate was instructive: "It gets to the point where you can throw too much technology at people. They don't want to look at a screen when they're attending the event. It's the convenience of ordering a hot dog and a beer without having to wait in line. And our surveys say that instant messaging will be popular, especially at baseball games because of the lulls in the action."

It's funny to recall that Major League Baseball, and even its renowned progressives, such as Branch Rickey, once shuddered at the idea of broadcasting games on radio or television; even as late as the mid-'90s, all four major sports leagues sued America Online for providing too many in-game updates, claiming such feeds undercut television rights by diluting "the excitement of a game in progress." But the MLB finally saw the light, and it now delivers that excitement in ways that make watching, or even attending, a ball game seem hopelessly passé.

Alan Schwarz is senior writer for Baseball America and a regular contributor to The New York Times and ESPN.com.

Copyright © 2002 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Yahoo! Internet Life.