An elaborate, early April Fools' Joke

Somehow, the press releases have managed to get the actual press involved, too. In addition to the tweet yesterday, there was this blog post by the L.A. Daily News last August: 

blogs.dailynews.com/preps/2015/08/06/rising-baseball-star-10-year-old-tommy-goodin/

and this mention in the Ventura County Star: www.vcstar.com/sports/youth/yo...27282-351159851.html

This is sadly becoming common in youth baseball.  Some parents have money to blow on whatever they want, so they blow it on their kids baseball dream.

My son played with a boy in 9u, who was playing up, let's call him Timmy.  We ran into Timmy last year while he played 11u, and he was telling us about this amazing summer team he was on.  I decided to google it and I found the team....billing itself as an all American national team that travels to multiple states and venues looking for the best of the best to represent the country, if you are asked to join a 5K deposit is required.  Did I mention 11u?

I just googled him again, and he's got baseball profiles on twitter, instagram, facebook, lockerdome, you tube videos, and yes HIS OWN WEB PAGE!  Complete with a bio describing his incredible journey from 7u all-stars and video in the batting cage while he describes himself as having a high baseball IQ and working to constantly improve his footwork and batting skills....he lists himself as a 4'10, 90 pound, switch hitter who has been on multiple national teams.  This isn't April Fools it's just Fools.

....think of how press releases work in relation to media.  Often starved for content with hard deadlines, and you give them an already written article, you can get it printed/aired.  And if it already through a "verified" source (24-7), you can take the story straight to print/publication/air without even having to make any verifications.

I just got educated about how the local on-line "newspaper" gets its content (local paper cut back hard copy print to three days a week and on-line is supposed to fill in the gaps).  Was going to sign up to report scores when I was told by the that, in that role, I would also be responsible for writing an unbiased article to accompany the scores - had to bow out as simply not enough time for that level of commitment.

So, I thought I'd read up on our high school's double header yesterday with cross town rival.  Big headlines about how the rival team won 2nd game of double header and pitcher remained undefeated.  Good beefy recap of all the offensive plays made and pitcher preserving his unbeaten record.  Towards the end of the story, there was a brief recap of their loss in game #1 and the heroic efforts of their starting pitcher - "strong outling" followed by "tough loss".  No mention of our starting pitcher that threw a complete game and got the win.  Was really bummed out cause it was my son who got the complete game win.

Might have to reconsider and sharpen my writing skills and start generating some PR.  Maybe they'll let me do a background story about how he made 9 yo all stars.  He'll be famous when I get done.  

2017LHP, have you heard of gamechanger?  Someone inputs everything that happened in the game from strike outs, swings and misses, fielders choice...etc.  At the end of the game the program writes an unbiased account of the game.  It typically has a headline that says "Team ABC goes down to XYZ team despite John Smith's effort on the mound"...it then goes on to write a recap with the game highlights. I think they have a free trial, you might want to check into that.

Saw the gamechanger articles - two separate ones with 2017 mentioned in the article (unbiased computer generated article).  That article attributed the win to one of the OF's who singled in the 1st inning and went on to score (won 3-2) with 2017 "working out of six tough spots".  Didn't really read like an article that gets cut out and saved.  

I think the programming that went into building this out is fantastic, but I really find some of the quirks quite funny.  Had an away game out of town last Friday that we did not attend - following on gamechanger.  In the first game, our pitcher (not my kid this time) got left in to finish the game.  Ended up giving up some hits/walks in the bottom of 7th and they scored 4 runs to win 5-4 - no outs recorded.  Gamechanger article read that starting pitcher "lasted just six innings" (no outs recorded so computer did not credit him pitching the 7th).  If only that had been true.  The whole time my wife was screaming at the screen - "take the kid out".

That said, there is nothing like the human touch when it comes to heaping accolades and crafting those memorable articles.    

He probably has a parent in PR who's leveraging media relationships to get the placement. It was probably a slow news day and they had to report on something.

Anyone notice that the article in the original post was really a plea for money to help this boys baseball career. With a link to a go fund me page?  

Hmmmm. When I saw your title of the thread, I though you were talking about the Nor'easter set to dump snow on the east coast this Sun-Monday.