Tweet Away Fans.

With baseball's regular season rapidly approaching, now is the perfect time to look at how new media will have an affect on baseball, how teams are drawing fans more into the game, and how reporting in baseball is being influenced.

Perhaps you saw the Minnesota Twins are finally beating the New York Yankees in something. Too bad is isn't world championships. The Twins are incorporating a "Tweet Board" at Target Field this year. The idea came from Chris Iles, who is the Minnesota Twins' corporate communications manager.

Our Field of Dreams

As a fan, I love this idea and I'm glad to see the Twins finally do something that isn't in their small market scheme. It'll work well because baseball is the only professional sport where the pace of the game is slow enough you can objectively argue people at the game, especially season ticket holders, may become bored. If you reference Rick Reilly's book Sports from Hell, Reilly went to an L.A. Dodgers game and timed the "action" of the game i.e. the time the ball was actually in play, being pitched, or hit and the total time of "action" in a three hour game came to a grand total of 17 minutes.

In any other sport, a "Tweet Board" would be possible, but not nearly as affective because instead of adding to the game I think it would take away. Fans would possibly miss the slam dunks, touchdown runs and highlight plays they long to see. With baseball and the pauses in action, it gives fans a break and they can be engaged elsewhere, such as the new Tweet Board implemented at Target Field. If you want to see the question and answer session ESPN had with Iles, visit here.

I'm very fond of the Twins doing this because Twitter has exploded with users and speaking as a fan there have been times I've been at Twins games and became bored. With the new Tweet Board it would give me the oppourtunity to interact with another thing at the game and during a loss, probably keep my at the ballpark a little bit longer, which probably lead me to buying more stuff and the Twins bottom line growing.

I would not be surprised to see more professional sports teams, and possibly even the upper-tier of colleges start implementing this in their home venues. The more ways teams can make fans feel like they are a part of the team the better off they will be.

I can see the Tweet Board helping broadcasters at the game as well as it may give them ideas about what to talk about while on-air with their audience, it will help fans who arent using the Tweet Board to learn more about the players on the team and give them a more personal connection with players and coaches.

This is a great idea the Minnesota Twins have and are implementing, and finally we arent getting another team's leftovers.And here's a video for those interested in Target Field.

(Updated May 26th, 2012)

Apparently boobs split locker rooms, although they arent very important ones

Perhaps you saw this. Apparently boobs divide locker rooms, although they arent important ones or at least not to me. But what is important is why that piece of worthless information was even wrote about. But here is a cool video about Vikimanis.

What is important to me though is wondering why a story like this is ever written. From looking at the blog page you can tell the writers put out a tremendous amount of blogs which could lead to having to blog about useless and trvial things, such as silicon breasts.

Laura Vikmanis, the NFL's oldest cheerleader
Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Don't get me wrong though, the Shutdown Corner, at least to me, is one of the best football blogs on the Web but when I read about fake breasts dividing cheerleaders locker rooms I get hesitant to come back. Yes it is the offseason in the NFL but please find something more relevant. Perhaps the Peyton Manning saga? Just an idea. And here's another Yahoo!, please find somebody to filter the comments, oh my lord people say some vile things behind their computers.

With Yahoo! Sports always trying to compete with the other guy, which is the formidable ESPN, Yahoo! Sports needs to look more professional than having all of that nasty stuff up for viewing on their website. I certainly wouldn't encourage my Grandmother to read that page.

This is a prime example of how needing instant gratification provided more and more by the mobile web we end up reading football articles about plastic boobs. Great news really.

Dont get me wrong I am not trying to rip Chase for his blog post in any way other than I may have lost a few brain cells reading this post. I hope I can get them back, I knew I should have paid closer attention in science class.

I think this will be a trend that continues in the blogsphere with writers having more and more to produce and the shrinking budget of the industry, which really is quite sad and alarming.

It scares me because I want to read blogs that are worth my time and this one certainly was not.

Mr. Chase, I'll be back, but please step up your game.

Whether it's real or silicon.

(Updated April 26th, 2012)

Tweeting While Driving; Mr. 100

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain doing something that will never, ever be duplicated again.

Here's this issue I have with Mr. Chamberlain's amazing accomplishment: There was no media at the game this day, that's right not one single journalist was there to give us a game recap, which is really too bad because if one person would have been fortunate enough to use their brain they would have essentially had a career's worth of articles and excluvise quotes from Chamberlain.

You'd think the NBA would have been smart enough to have at least one camera at the game so they had proof of of Chamberlain's feat right? Wrong. Not sure what commissioner is to blame for that, but they rightfully deserve it. The only proof of Mr. 100 is a picture of him holding a piece of paper with the number 100 written on it.

Not exactly overwhelming evidence
photo courtesy of Bleacher Report

Just look at these two dreadful examples of terrible journalism that occured only 50 years ago. We have quite possibly the greatest feat of basektball history and no actual proof it happened. So Mr. Chamberlain, I'm happy for your accomplishment but I'm also a litte skeptical (maybe there is more proof of another record you had) but enjoy your day "Mr. 100".

I can only hope that such a crime in journalism doesnt occur again, because all of us deserve to know what actually happened.

Here's something interesting that happened this week: During a delay during the already post poned Daytona 500, Brad Keselowski took the whole social media thing to a new level.

Mr. Keselowski at the Daytona 500
Photo courtesy of Sports Grid

Here's some background: Nascar has been pushing it's athletes, oops, I mean drivers, to be more engaged in the use of social media. Mr. Keselowski hearing this decided to keep his cell phone in his car during the first race of the Nascar season which was the Daytona 500.

Photo Courtesy of By the Numbers

So during a delay, he tweeted standing outside of his car. Things then exploded.

Racing analysists cringed and complained and you know what Nascar said?

Yeah.

Do you know how awesome I think this is? Just the simple fact that Keselowski had the foresight to keep his cellphone in his car and then had the balls to send out a tweet while he's in his "office" is something I love.

Can you imagine what would happen in the Twitter universe if Aaron Rodgers was answering questions on how to read and beat the blitz during half time of a game?

Photo Courtesy of View From The Brew

I think Nascar is far ahead of the curve with allowing it's drivers to use social media during the race delays. It lets fans feel more connected and honestly it probably keeps more viewers on whatever channel the race is on during the delay.

I wont say this often, but Nascar finally did something worth talking about. Because really how exciting is it to watch a bunch of cars make left turn after left turn.

(Updated April 26th, 2012)