Blue Seat is a mobile software company and baseball’s first modern technology company. Our focus is on building an entire product suite for fans to follow along with the game on their phones and tablets and record the events from their own perspective.
Do baseball fans want to do this?
Of course.
Think about this: humans have been recording events from their own perspective since the beginning. There are our stories.
The first recorded story happened 40,000 years ago when an early human traced his hand on a cave wall, telling the simplest of stories: “I was here.”
Today we are rabid storytellers. Instagram, Twitter, Vine. These are the current storytelling tools for smartphones & tablets.
But are we better storytellers because of social media? I think so, but there’s still a problem that has not been solved yet. In other words no one has designed a good, digital solution for yet.
How can we use technology to help us remember the things we want to remember?
One company in particular is already starting to tackle the opposite problem, with great results. Snapchat. There are moments in life (what I ate for breakfast, the color of my socks) that we don’t necessarily care or need to remember forever. They are ephemeral and there’s value in that.
What about the moments you actually want to relive for the rest of your life? Baseball is full of those. As a player, as a fan, a coach, a parent.
Keeping score is simply the best way to follow along with a game and stay engaged. Scorekeepers understand this. It’s a secret that is unbeknown to fans that don’t keep score. I’ve talked to many scorekeepers and I am one myself. Fans that do not keep score, and even non-baseball fans, still have a sort of respect for the scorekeeper.
It’s a very well-designed system too. Scorekeeping is a 150 year old shorthand language for quickly telling the story of a game. It’s made up of simple lines, shapes & symbols.
No other sport has fans who keep score just for fun. Have you ever heard a fan at a football game turn around and ask, “Hey, was that a 3 or a 4 yard gain? I’m documenting each play just for my remembrance.”
Baseball is different in that way. There’s just something damn romantic about it. Maybe it is the leisure pace of a game or the slow build of a season. Ironically MLB is looking at speeding up the pace of the game, hoping that new fans will stop believing that baseball is boring.
Baseball is far from boring for scorekeepers. Under the surface baseball is a complex game. There’s a lot going on with each pitch. Defensive players shifting, runners trying to steal bases, pitchers trying stay ahead in the count, batters trying to hit differently depending on who and how many guys are on base.
In talking with scorekeepers and non-scorekeepers I’ve made an interesting observation: everyone respects the scorekeeper. Even non-baseball fans still honor it, many times because they have some vague, distant memory of a parent or grandparent scribbling backwards K’s on a piece of paper during a baseball game.
Think about baseball stories for a moment. They all probably start in a similar fashion:
Bottom of the 9th, 2 out, 1 man on base, down a run …
or
Top of the 1st, leadoff guy steps in, ready for the first pitch …
The context is crucial for any good story. The Scorecard gives that context. And by making it digital we open up all kinds of new storytelling opportunities to share those stories with people around us.
Today most fans have supercomputers in their pockets and purses.
How many of these fans are taking a photo with their phone? Most of them. They are documenting their story. They are storytellers. They are essentially scorekeepers.
Blue Seat is my next project and I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life on it if that’s what it takes. As of August 2014 I am no longer doing any client work. This is what I am doing now. Full-time focus from here on out. I hope it’s a 25+ year company. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be.
