Major League Baseball is one of my favorite sports to watch, but I have to complain that the sport is tied to history and tradition rather than embracing change. Remember the hoopla surrounding rolling out instant replay or the perfect game called off because of human error?

As frustrating as it is, MLB does do things right every now and then – and we aren’t talking about inviting Chris Berman to call the home run derby, that falls into the frustrating category.  For example, over the weekend, I saw a marriage between a great game and one of my current passions, social media.

Now you don’t need to hand me a cold compress, the ole ballgame has embraced social media in a cool way with their new MLB.com Pulse.

Much like having your finger on the pulse of a trend, MLB’s version gives a social wrap up of each of the night’s game by combining video, Tweets and score updates.  The tool is a dream for a geek². Not only is there a social graph of what’s happening in real-time to gauge the buzz of each team, but also shows the stats and video to go along with the buzz.

So with these graphs in hand, I applaud the crew in the league offices that embraced social media to bring the sport to the wired masses. Now if only they would start letting their videos be embedded.

Do you think other leagues will take the copycat approach to this innovation or will they ignore social media and hope that they can keep it away from their games?

Major League Baseball is one of my favorite sports to watch, but I have to complain that the sport is tied to history and tradition rather than embracing change. Remember the hoopla surrounding rolling out instant replay or the perfect game called off because of human error?

As frustrating as it is, MLB does do things right every now and then – and we aren’t talking about inviting Chris Berman to call the home run derby, that falls into the frustrating category.  For example, over the weekend, I saw a marriage between a great game and one of my current passions, social media.

Now you don’t need to hand me a cold compress, the ole ballgame has embraced social media in a cool way with their new MLB.com Pulse.

Much like having your finger on the pulse of a trend, MLB’s version gives a social wrap up of each of the night’s game by combining video, Tweets and score updates.  The tool is a dream for a geek². Not only is there a social graph of what’s happening in real-time to gauge the buzz of each team, but also shows the stats and video to go along with the buzz.

So with these graphs in hand, I applaud the crew in the league offices that embraced social media to bring the sport to the wired masses. Now if only they would start letting their videos be embedded.

Do you think other leagues will take the copycat approach to this innovation or will they ignore social media and hope that they can keep it away from their games?

Major League Baseball is one of my favorite sports to watch, but I have to complain that the sport is tied to history and tradition rather than embracing change. Remember the hoopla surrounding rolling out instant replay or the perfect game called off because of human error?

As frustrating as it is, MLB does do things right every now and then – and we aren’t talking about inviting Chris Berman to call the home run derby, that falls into the frustrating category.  For example, over the weekend, I saw a marriage between a great game and one of my current passions, social media.

Now you don’t need to hand me a cold compress, the ole ballgame has embraced social media in a cool way with their new MLB.com Pulse.

Much like having your finger on the pulse of a trend, MLB’s version gives a social wrap up of each of the night’s game by combining video, Tweets and score updates.  The tool is a dream for a geek². Not only is there a social graph of what’s happening in real-time to gauge the buzz of each team, but also shows the stats and video to go along with the buzz.

So with these graphs in hand, I applaud the crew in the league offices that embraced social media to bring the sport to the wired masses. Now if only they would start letting their videos be embedded.

Do you think other leagues will take the copycat approach to this innovation or will they ignore social media and hope that they can keep it away from their games?

Major League Baseball is one of my favorite sports to watch, but I have to complain that the sport is tied to history and tradition rather than embracing change. Remember the hoopla surrounding rolling out instant replay or the perfect game called off because of human error?

As frustrating as it is, MLB does do things right every now and then – and we aren’t talking about inviting Chris Berman to call the home run derby, that falls into the frustrating category.  For example, over the weekend, I saw a marriage between a great game and one of my current passions, social media.

Now you don’t need to hand me a cold compress, the ole ballgame has embraced social media in a cool way with their new MLB.com Pulse.

Much like having your finger on the pulse of a trend, MLB’s version gives a social wrap up of each of the night’s game by combining video, Tweets and score updates.  The tool is a dream for a geek². Not only is there a social graph of what’s happening in real-time to gauge the buzz of each team, but also shows the stats and video to go along with the buzz.

So with these graphs in hand, I applaud the crew in the league offices that embraced social media to bring the sport to the wired masses. Now if only they would start letting their videos be embedded.

Do you think other leagues will take the copycat approach to this innovation or will they ignore social media and hope that they can keep it away from their games?