The all-knowing sports writer takes a seat in the press box well before the first baseball player stretches his multi-million dollar hamstrings. The well-manicured ball diamond is immaculate with every blade of grass neatly in place and the eerily quiet stadium provides a sanctuary for the “student” of the game to hunker down to read the game notes.

The “knowledge packet” is roughly 30 pages and generally written in 8-point font. However, each team has a glossy yearly media guide packed with 150 pages of all the information you could ever hope for, and go to any sports writer’s house and you will find at least two collecting dust in the bathroom magazine rack.

If you can’t see a reason to take advantage of the newest technological advances in augmented reality, then you just hate trees. But if you need another reason, let me just say this: “Sports writers are the laziest hardest working people in the industry.”

Augmented Reality Technology will give sports journalists what they want.

What the heck is this ‘Augmented Reality’?

The Urban Dictionary defines augmented reality as the “the fusion of 3D and real life imagery, achieved via the use of modern image-processing technology.” Translation? The software geeks created a way for layers of important (and maybe not so important) information to be displayed simultaneously as you observe the world around you.

Did ‘Augmented Reality’ really begin when scribes wrote the Bible?

In 1962, Morton Heilig created Sensorama, a combination of visuals, sound, vibration and smell; the first step toward AR technology. The technology has advanced from the bulky unmovable Sensorama, to a head-mounted display, to space-age glasses to the convenience of a tiny smart phone that fits comfortably in your pocket. Now, you can walk into a bar and know if she really is single or just not interested thanks to StreetSpark.

Why is ‘Augmented Reality’ such a great thing for the sports journalist?

Anyone can write “The Detroit Tigers crushed the Boston Red Sox 11-2 at Fenway Park on Friday.” A good sports writer adds color to the copy and most of that “color” comes from those hundreds of pages of notes. Most of the time that is why we read, “The Detroit Tigers, wearing their road gray uniforms, crushed the home team, Boston Red Sox in front of a drunken Fenway crowd.” The WYSIWYG of sports writing.

With the use of augmented reality technology, a sports journalist can get tons of data at the touch of a finger. Loads of information once confined to the pages of a media guide, now floating in the virtual world at yet complete with all the sites, sounds and smells of the ballpark.

Augmented Reality in Major League Baseball

In defining moments of the game you click on Dustin Pedroia and see what his batting average is against the new Tiger pitcher.

The game is a virtual blowout but you still have to create an article that people will want to read. Click on the Citgo sign and add the history to a graph or a sidebar on your site. Take a virtual tour inside the Green Monster and talk about how the Red Sox played uninspired and without care of the history that lies within the ballpark.

Do you wonder what the average fan cares about? Click the Twitter icon and see all the tweets from within the ballpark and what people are thinking while at home watching the game. “Why does Francona still have Pedroia hitting? He has no chance against this pitcher!”

Your copy could read as if you live in the minds of the fans.

“In the pivotal eighth inning, Francona left Pedroia in to hit although he is batting just .138 in his last 10 games. Francona, playing the odds, left Pedroia in who is batting .587 lifetime against the Tigers’ bullpen ace. Nonetheless, Pedroia struck out on three pitches.”

The possibilities are endless and the up-to-the-second information is already there from the MLB Web site as they stream the games live. The extra information can be loaded on a nightly basis just like the PR Departments of the ball club updates the game notes for the next day.

Why sports journalists can celebrate because this will happen?

This wouldn’t happen if it was simply to ease the load of the sports journalist, but when there is money to be made you can be confident that augmented reality will become reality.

Why?

1. The Ipad provides a larger touch screen so journalist aren’t stuck squinting at their smart phones.
2. The programs purchased for $10 to $15 at the games are no longer a “must have.” Why not spend the same amount and receive some type of contraption you can use during the game? The only question is, “Can someone make a cost effective devise that can be updated each game?” Buy a device for $50 and get free uploads of each game for the rest of the season.
3. Go to MLB.com and download the game app directly to your smart phone and at $2 per game it could make sense.

Augmented Reality could answer the most important ballpark questions: “Is there a line for the bathroom?” And, “Where is the beer guy?”

It could also put to rest the most annoying display in the history of professional sports. With a friend finder icon, you can type in where your friend is sitting and the smart phone app will show you exactly where he or she is sitting.

There will never be a need to stand up in front of me and wave your hand for five minutes as you tell your friend, “See the CVS sign near the first base line? Go up about 20 rows and then over two sections. Do you see me? I am waving. Do you see me?” And that, my friend, should be a good enough reason to launch this app tomorrow.

Oh good, they have started on this:

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J.David will never win an award for his writing, but he is a former collegiate athlete for a small college where everyone makes the team. Currently, he is a grad student at the University of Southern California studying the archaic form called, Print Journalism.

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