legalasice.com

It has been enlightening to immerse myself in the virtual world of baseball fans. I always knew there were many ways to connect fans from all across the country (and even from other countries), but I have not experienced this arena firsthand until the past few months. For those fans, I offer the following plan to help make legalasice.com the next great resource for hardball diehards worldwide.

 

 

 

SHORT TERM GOAL: To raise awareness about Legalasice.com among both baseball fans online and those connected to baseball in a professional capacity. And to continue to cover the world of baseball happenings.

 

 

 

LONG TERM GOAL: To make Legalasice.com the premier site for behind-the-scenes glimpses and commentary from all aspects of the baseball world.

 

MORE GOAL SPECIFICS

The world of virtual baseball is enormous and getting bigger all the time.

There are the sports behemoths ESPN and Yahoo! Sports that offer articles with basic facts and features with analysis and personal touches. They also offer video and a vast array of interactive features that can keep fans entertained for hours (if only we didn’t have to go to work).

In a game as complicated as the national pastime, there are innumerable things to talk about that the sports giants leave behind. The blogosphere has risen to the challenge with thousands of blogs, ranging from team-specific to general interest to stats-driven. All of these allow for readers to engage with the sites’ owners. Fans themselves can even skip the middle man and head directly to a fan forum. Major League Baseball hosts some of these but so do outside fan sites.

How, then, can one more voice be heard in this echo chamber? By giving readers something that no one else is offering. For most bloggers, that means supplying their unique evaluations of players and happenings. This business plan relies on the notion that a single person’s or a few people’s (in the case of a blog staffed by more than one) perspectives are valuable enough to be useful reading. The problem with this model is that most people don’t have a unique perspective. Most fans read the same sources and watch the same games with the same commentators and listen to the same talk radio programs that discuss the same sorts of topics. In many cases, the blogs differ in name only.

Then how can legalasice.com succeed where so many other bloggers have failed? How can it have its own voice? The answer is simple: by enlisting the many voices of those closest to the game. For instance, my interview with Tampa Bay Rays Assistant Director of Minor League Operations Chaim Bloom was a hit with Rays fans. After sending my link along to a few of my Rays fan friends, I received some complimentary feedback. This was what the fans had been thirsting for all along–access to the people who make the sport run. Fans get to hear brief, clichéd interviews with star players after a big game, but never have they had access to a catalogue of interviews that document every aspect of the game’s amazing diversity. Legalasice.com will give them that resource.

Players, managers, general managers, scouts, journalists, or up-and-coming prospects, legalasice.com will have spoken to them all and arranged them in a searchable database, available 24 hours a day. A fan can log on in the middle of the offseason and listen to an assistant GM tell funny stories from the Winter Meetings or hear a highly touted high school prospect talk about his daily routine and the pressure he feels when scouts scrutinize his at bats. The possibilities are endless and remarkably informative. This site will offer a wide perspective and as the same time it will be a comprehensive first-person historian and informant.

This is not to say that it will abandon its blog format or cease to give its readers important insights from the minds of its writers (for, indeed, its staff will expand). Those sorts of insights are the kind of things that readers develop relationships with and that bring people back again and again. Legalasice.com won’t only be a reference book; it will be an engaged and engaging commentator. Continuing to offer the kind of sharp, opinionated and witty writing that is has offered readers in the past, Legalasice.com will expand its coverage by posting more times per week on a broader array of topics.

The short term goal above explains the first step that would need to be taken before this plan can become a reality. To obtain the sort of interviews the site needs, Legalasice.com will have to garner a name as a site to be watched and respected. This will begin on a small scale by building on a series of interviews. David Kaplan of WGN Radio has already agreed to an interview with Legalasice.com and he or Bloom may be able to suggest other willing subjects for the site. Advertising will also boost the site’s profile and give it better access to those at the top. Of course the site will begin commenting on as many baseball blogs and fan sites and forums as possible to get the word out to as many online baseball fans as possible. It will even look to drive traffic by offering contests for tickets to professional games or official team merchandise and advertising them on sites like deadspin.com and mlb.com.

Long term, Legalasice.com seeks to be the best source for all perspectives on the game of baseball. That means amassing a large number of interviews from as many places as possible to give fans the variety of information and views that they are currently lacking. Legalasice.com will be the place fans go to find out what everyone is doing behind the scenes and off the field.

COMMUNITY:

The world of baseball fans is a very large and varied group of people. Last year more than 79 million people attended professional baseball games and a good many more watched these games on television. It is a testament to the sport’s popularity that it can support a 162 game schedule, the longest of any other major American professional sport. Demographics of baseball fans vary greatly due to its wide appeal and its dispersion across the country (and even across the world). So it is very hard to generalize about baseball fans, aside from the obvious fact that they all adore the national pastime.

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BLOG DEVELOPMENT PLAN:

1) There are two first steps in this process:

One is to continue to secure interesting interviews and leverage them to find new subjects. David Kaplan of WGN radio has already agreed to speak with Legalasice.com. Either he or Bloom could help locate other people (former players for instance or scouts) willing to talk about their lives in baseball.

The other first step is to hire more correspondents to enable the site to post a few times a day and keep its readers well informed. These extra workers would also be able to expand the search of interview subjects and then be able to conduct them as well.

2) Once the site is offering a higher volume of information daily. We would begin advertising in various places including ESPN.com, mlb.com, and Yahoo! Sports. Commenting on as many baseball blogs as possible, each with a link to our Web site, would also raise awareness and traffic.

3 ) To keep all the math-o-philes in our audience entertained, we would open up a section of the site devoted to the understanding and analysis of the blossoming field of esoteric baseball statistics. One of our staff writers would also comment on the usefulness of these metrics and keep readers posted on all the discussions and controversies in that area.

4) We would also run special informative features like “A Day At Spring Training,” which would have an interactive map of a team’s spring facility. Clickable spots on the map would reveal information about what happened there during the day perhaps complete with sound or video.

5) Our database of interviews would be indexed by the subject’s name, the interview date, the interview topics, the interview medium (audio or video), the subject’s job, the length of the interview, the team with which the subject is affiliated (if any), and other useful information. Also, if the interview is done in audio, we would be sure to take some photos to accompany it, if possible. Also the full text of the transcribed interview would be made available and searchable on the site.

6) There would be an online forum for guests to discuss the latest posts on the site or just to talk to one another about the game.

7) An interactive calendar would alter members of their favorite team’s homestands and important baseball dates like the hall of fame induction ceremony and the trade deadline. For any of those dates where we have relevant interviews or blog posts, there would also be a link to our content so that users could anticipate and inform themselves about important happenings.

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