From Baseball to Basketball

Searching some of the top stories in news for the day I came across an Alex Rodriguez headline. Rodriguez is the starting third baseman for the New York Yankees. The story is about his wife filing for divorce. I thought the photo included with the article was humorous. It is him and his wife in the stands of what seems to be a sporting event. He looks to be annoyed with her because she seems to be talking to him to . The article talks about his extramarital affairs so the photograph is fitting to the description of Rodriguez by his wife in the article calling her husband an adulterer who "emotionally abandoned his wife and children."

I looked at headlines from cbssportsline.com, espn.com, foxsports.com and mlb.com and noticed they all had the same top story. The story was about pitcher C.C. Sabathia, who was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers from the Cleveland Indians. Both cbsportsline and foxsports.com had interesting plays on words for headlines. It seems sports news organizations are into clever headlines and in this case they are incorporating a players name. CBS used the headline "C.C. (ya) Sabathia." Fox used the headline "C.C. you later." The coverage on Sabathia is different between the news organizations such as foxsports.com which talks about the Sabathia trade in a news story along with other important story lines in professional baseball. Espn.com does a similar job but instead looks at the particular division the Brewers are in. The article looks at the effect the Sabathia trade has on the Brewers and the two other teams in contention for winning the division, which are the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. The MLB page focuses more on video content to help tell the story. There is a video with baseball experts discussing the impact of the trade. There is another video included showing the report of the Sabathia trade by mLB.com. This was apart of a package including other top stories in baseball.

On a humorous note, the video showing Shaquille O'Neal of the NBA's Phoenix Suns badmouthing his former teammate Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers in a freestyle has to be one of the funnier moments for professional athletes and a low point depending on perceptions.

Happy Father's Day from MLB.com

I know Father's Day is over a week over due, but I really liked the multimedia presentation done by Major League Baseball in honor of the celebration. Father's Day and baseball seems to be a sport closely linked to this special day celebrating fathers all over the globe. The MLB website does a great job of providing a human interest element for their players. Leagues always need to do public relations assignments like these to portray their players as more than athletes. For examples, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has a campaign called NBA Cares, which is a program that allows players to become involved in their surrounding community. The National Football League (NFL) has a campaign teamed up with the United Way, which is the same as the NBA by involving players in their local community. To bring this back to baseball, the NBA and NFL profiles certain players in their public relations campaign for human interest.

The page dedicated to Father's Day begins with photos of players with their families. There are photos of players with their fathers, mothers, children, wives, other family members or a combination of these people. One of my favorite pages is of Lastings Milledge, who is a player for the Washington Nationals and they are relatively close in geography from the Richmond area. He has a picture with his father, who obviously played a big role in his life.

I also like the PR the MLB uses to get people to buy tickets by putting on the link to purchase 'Take Dad to a ballgame: Buy tickets now'. Also, a link to shop for MLB merchandise to 'Shop for Dad'. They are at the top of every player profile for Father's Day.

Interactive Sports Websites

CBS Sportsline has an interesting multimedia format, which allows readers to receive their report on headline news and have access to other neat tools. For example, headline news yesterday was of Atlanta Braves third basemen Chipper Jones being hit in the face with a baseball. I could only find the link to Jones being hit in the face with the ball on MLB.com. I notice many news outlets showed the amateur videotape on television, but chose not to post the video next to their stories on their websites. The story is not very long, but at the bottom is a place for fans to comment. The website seems to have a focus on this aspect of multimedia to have fan involvement.

Sportsline has created a cult following for fans of a sport and of specific teams because there is information on each fan that posts a comment. Each fan has a link to their own personal fan sports page. On the Braves website I looked at the first comment that appeared at the top of the fans comment link and it was by the user BravesGurl1983. In her profile there is information on her personally and there are links to her other favorite teams and tracks her latest postings. The top rated Braves fan is SaintsFan85.

To come back to the story on Jones there are links to other headline stories in the organization and each story has a number beside it. The number tracks the amount of comments on stories, which allows users to see the popularity of certain stories. There are links to other Braves headline stories and a section of headlines of Major League Baseball.