Technology Innovation and Baseball

I ran in to one of my young neighbors, Kristin Martin at the sandwich shop today. She was all bubbly and excited. Would you not be if you had just won the Senior League Softball World Series? She plays second base for the Citrus Park (Tampa) team which beat the Puerto Rican team in Delaware yesterday.

Women have had a long, interesting path in baseball. Technology, in contrast, has not had much of a track record in baseball - especially when compared to technology in American football I recently wrote about.

You see, baseball - America's pastime since the 1850s - is nothing if not traditional. The only technology allowed in the baseball dugout is the telephone used to call relief pitchers in the bullpen. I think the Amish use more modern technology. While the NFL has tried variations of instant replay for two decades now, baseball resists (though see this speculation that a buzzer was used to alert the umpire to review a  play during the highly charged Yankees-Red Sox series last year).  Diehard Baseball fans still draw their heliographs on paper baseball scorecards.

Baseball is also full of superstitions.  The famous Curse of the Bambino supposedly kept the Red Sox from winning a World Series since 1918.  Wade Boggs, recently enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame, epitomized quirky routines. 7 out of this list of 10 most superstitious athletes come from baseball.

Traditional and superstitious - sounds hopeless for a technology salesperson. Well, not completely.  Unlike the NFL, which has salary caps and tries for parity, baseball encourages competition for players.  The payroll at the richest team is 7 times as much as at the lowest one. The poorer teams are willing to experiment to get an edge - and technology can help.

Baseball gathers more statistics than the census bureau. This has allowed for an analytical discipline called "sabermetrics" to influence many baseball team strategies. It was written about in the bestseller Moneyball: The art of winning an unfair game by Michael Lewis, which celebrates the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane. Beane has managed to scout and recruit a series of inexpensive players and put several seasons of impressive team performance. Of course, other teams have noticed and have adopted similar disciplines and recruited Beane's staff. Many use scouting and player tracking software like ScoutAdvisor. The Red Sox even broke the "curse" with its help. 

Attracting fans through websites offers significant CRM opportunities. Major League Baseball uses SAS technology to analyze the billion visitors it gets to its site www.mlb.com and to those of the 30 teams in the league. This allows them to share an amazing array of player performance statistics on their web site with avid fans. It also allows fans to participate  in electronic balloting of All-Star players

One growing revenue source is live, streaming video to fans.  This article is a fascinating description of how MLB is avoiding "channel conflict" with its TV network partners  and tracking each IP address  using Quova's GeoPoint technology  before they accept them as customers for the on-line service.

One area where baseball has used technology extensively is in player training. Technology to help understand the physics of baseball, to measure ball speed and other areas.  Of course, more basic DVDs and videos allow for sharing experiences with aspiring Little Leaguers as well.

Baseball stadiums are a hive of technology gadgets and innovations. They allow for extensive and interactive fan involvement, wireless deployment and a number of other areas. And of course, "sportstainment" - the elaborate use of sound effects and video technology that baseball stadiums have become famous for.

A few years ago, a promising technology was an Umpire Information System developed by QuesTec. At the end of each game the umpire was given a CD which analyzed every ball thrown and whether the technology decided it was in the strike zone as against what the umpires called. Questions about product accuracy and financial problems at the vendor have stalled this innovation. Not to mention it challenges baseball's tradition of respecting umpire judgment calls.

Some day, young girls like Kristin may again have a League of their Own.  Till then, MLB will hopefully offer them growing technology opportunities.  As Yogi Berra would say many will gladly take that fork in that road.