Go green.

Well, it's that day again, April 20th. Giving some people a reason to celebrate being green. While people might smoke and roll their green, I'm celebrating this day for a different reason. Today is the 100th anniversay of Fenway Park and with it includes that ever dubious green monster.

Fenway Park is THE ballpark that every die hard baseball fan longs to go to. The place has withstood time for obviously one hundred years. The reasons for this are plentiful but I want to focus on just a few.

In a time where companies are driven to gain the biggest bottomline, Fenway Park is simply Fenway Park. It isn't Target Field, or U.S. Cellular Field, or even Wrigley Field. The place seems intent on telling you to keep your damn groceries, cell phones, and stick of gum. It doesnt want money for a name and that is something that consumers, exectuvites and fans should all take note of. Quite honestly, it's something for ownership to be proud of.

While Fenway is quite old, the park is really quite updated. They do have a video board and available seating and concessions stands are always growing in numbers.

Fenway parks seems keen on not letting social media get ahold of their park and with good reason. The historical feel needs to be present and if social media technologies were implemented into the park it would definitely lose that feel.

Fenway needs to stick to it's historical roots and if it didnt I believe their would be an uprising, not only among Red Sox fans, but also baseball fans in general. You simply do not take a 1954 Chevy Mustang and put in features from a 2012 model.

Another reason social media cannot be incorporated at this park is because the venue, not the multi-million dollar athletes on the payroll, or the manager who recently ran his mouth against one of the most beloved players in the Boston area. The park has constantly been changed but the historical contexts have always remained the same.

So thank you Fenway Park and Boston Red Sox ownership and management for ignoring social media. It has turned out quite positive.

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)

Oh Linsanity, you're getting close Tebowmania in your annoyance level.

Photo courtesy of People Magazine

Read ESPN, Yahoo!Sports, or any other sports outlet. It's all about this guy Jeremey Lin.

The college across the street didnt recruit him, so he walked on at Harvard. Had a pretty successful college career, essentially put Harvard on the national map in terms of basketball. So you'd think an NBA team would draft him right?

You're so wrong.

Lin went undrafted, proceed to get cut, by more than one team. Became a bench warmer for the New York Knicks and luckily for him got some time in a game.

Ever since then, it's been Lin, Lin, Lin. (and no, that's not a reference to his win-loss record)

Sports journalism has exploded with this guy and I'm frankly annoyed by it.

Yes, it's a cool story. But it hasnt even been ten games. He hasnt played with the teams' superstar Carmelo Anothony. I'm not Linsane, but I am going insanse with all the coverage.

This is an example of how sports journalism gets it wrong in my opinion sometime. Sportswriters always love a Cinderalla story, and when it is found, albeit rare, it explodes.

We get so caught up in this single phenomenon we lose track of this bigger picture of sports.

This is the second such phenomenon to happen in less than a year. The first would have been Tebowmania and Skip Bayless' unconditional love for a NFL quarterback who I dare say is the worst NFL quarterback there is in the leauge.

We get so caught in the current of, "oh my, Tebow did this and Tebow did that" and "oh wow, Lin had a career high in assists last night!"

Tell me about Derrick Rose's back, or Ricky Rubio's success, or how the Boston Celtics need to call a retirement home. Please give me something other than Lin Baby Lin!

Maybe we should focus on how sports affect the big picture for once. How packing an arena in a city boosts the economy in the area, or look at how people maintain employment because of sports such as vendors and bar owners. Sports effect so much more than Lin or Tebow.

This is not an attack on either of these individuals, I dont know them personally and I'm not in the right to judge them. This is an attack on the media coverage and implosion the media causes by getting so caught up in one single moment.

Lin had a SportsCenter Top 10 all to himself! He's hasnt even started 10 games in the NBA!

So please media coverage, it's time to forget how to Lin, Lin, Lin. My sanity will thank you.

(updated April 26th, 2012)

Oh, the Super Bowl. How America loves you and yet I hate you. You are, in my opinion, one of the worst, if not THE worst football game played all season long. Your commercials were even sub-par this year.

But here's the reason I'm writing about the super bowl. With 99 percent of America watching the game on an HD tv somewhere, with a beer in hand and thinking of an excuse to feed their boss in the moring, we all saw the New York football Giants, (if only I could impersonate Chirs Berman) beat the Patriots.

Then the real madness insued, and it mainly brought to our attention by journalism.

Example A: Two patriots players decided that sulking with Tom Brady wasnt exactly for them so they took their shirts off and decided to party. Do whatever you need to do to deal with the grief of the biggest loss of your career, I guess.

Eample B: Then we have Tom Brady's super smoking hot wife, (such a lucky man) blasting the Patriot's wide receivers. Go Gisele! I have no doubt in my mind that you could have caught every pass that your beloved hubby threw that night! Then we also have the presumed Gisele curse that Mr. Brady is under, apparently Tony Romo suffered this same curse with Jessica Simpson. Tom, take a note from Tony and get rid of her.

Example C: The knee-jerk reaction from several journalists proclaiming insanely stupid things. If you'd like a great summary of the whole situation just read this. I'd go into further detail but I would disgrace Mr. Reilly and I refuse to do so.

Example D: I keep seeing the same damn commercial asking Eli Manning where he is going next. Good thing I know that answer, it's DISNEYWORLD!!!!

Example E: We have two Super Bowl gam officials who were, you know, kind of doing their job watching the game and hopefully their proper keys (ref lingo which I would love to talk about all day) who had a conversation late in the game to say the Welker drop was the end of the game. Some people might have an issue with this, but as an official I can tell you these kinds of conversations happen all the time. If people outside the profession actually understood all the jargon officials use, boy oh boy would we be in trouble. Luckily for me and the rest of the officiating world, people who want to get yelled at and be half right and half wrong all the time are few and far between.

I hope you all had a great Super Sunday, I hope some of you enjoyed Hangover Monday even, and then I hope you realize all of the madness that ensues with this game.

P.S., next president, please make the day after the Super Bowl a holiday. I'd love to have such a stupid holiday.




Ahhh, the Super Bowl.

With the festivities coming up this Sunday,you know, that thing called the Super Bowl, media coverage always is high. While I'd love to go on and on about how I think Tom Brady is overrated and how Eli Manning actually is better than his older brother, whom I'm sure you have heard of I need to stay on topic here.

With the media coverage ablaze in Indianapolis it gives me a great platform for this blog.

For starters I'll go off my personal experience, I use Twitter but I only follow roughly 20 people. As I'm checking my account on my BlackBerry right now I have five updates related to the Superbowl or football in general. Granted this does not directly related to the way I think of sports journalism and reporting, it does affect it because the way ESPN's NFL insider Adam Schefter breaks reports is through is Twitter account.

A very basic point is that we can get this news instantly. As soon as Schefter hits his enter button on whatever device he may be using we have access to that same information. How he seemingly gets the information first and accurately all the time is beyond my knowledge. But if you want to see how well this man works here is an activity to try sometime: wait for the day Yahoo! Sports has a breaking story then turn off all of your technological devices for a few hours, put ESPN on your television and watch how ESPN's insider has denied the report.

Anyways, back to the Superbowl and new media. While new media wont necessarily have an effect on the game itself, it will have an impact on the way journalists cover the game. I'd expect to see Tweets and network updates online more rapidly than in years past, just because of the society in which we live and the vast majority of people watching.

Another aspect of new media during the Superbowl that will be interesting to see is the commercials. Not necessarily the commericals in themselves, but the way companies are pushing technology in their products and/or services.

With all of these points in mind it will be interesting to watch how mew media affects the whole day. We'll only have 6 hours of pre-game coverage of only God knows what, plus the football game and the always too hyped half-time show, plus all the celebratory acts of the winning team, I'm sure we can oberseve how new media is affect sports journalism and reporting.

Have a super Sunday.