“You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.”
– Joe DiMaggio
If you’re a baseball fan, you know the giddy feeling that comes with Opening Day.
It’s a time when all 30 teams are still in the playoff hunt, well, except for maybe the Cubs.
It’s a time of optimism and hope, a time when a ballpark hot dog slathered in mustard tastes sweeter – and that $15 beer colder.
It’s a new beginning, a time to tinker with the lineup, experiment a little, maybe even change the rules. (Instant replay, anyone?)
“One of the beautiful things about baseball,” Nolan Ryan once said, “is that every once in a while, you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.”
It can be a metaphor for life – and for journalism.
And so, as a new baseball season begins, we’re setting out to prove something.
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“Baseball’s best teams lose about sixty-five times a season. It is not a game you can play with your teeth clenched.”
– George F. Will
Indeed, it’s a long season – 162 regular-season games, to be precise – filled with slumps and streaks.
With that in mind, what better time to experiment?
Luckily, the Braves home opener coincided with a magical event that unfolded 40 years earlier –the night Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run, breaking a record that some thought would stand forever.
An event that special deserves special coverage. So visitors to our websites were treated to a unique video. The historical photos and video clips of Aaron’s home run were certainly the star of the show – so, too, was Steve Hummer, who read a column from that night 40 years ago written by our legendary late sportswriter, Furman Bisher.
As an added bonus, our subscribers found a digital-only section on our Today’s Paper app capturing the excitement of opening day from around the country.
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“There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.”
— Tommy Lasorda
Of course, the season was just getting started. And so were we.
All of which brings us to the “Twitter Tale” that unfolded during the home opener.
Like most ideas, it certainly wasn’t original. But here’s how it came to be:
Each year, a group of leaders from Cox Media Group gathers in Orlando to swap ideas, map out a strategy for the coming months and head back home feeling inspired.
The conference always features speakers from outside our newspaper group, and this year some folks from The Boston Globe shared some behind-the-scenes stories of their coverage of the Boston marathon bombing. During their presentation, one mentioned an unrelated narrative he’d written known as a “Twitter Tale” – a story that unfolds in about 50 tweets.
We loved this idea, and Ray Cox, our sports editor, and others immediately began brainstorming some options around the Braves.
The home opener – and the 40th anniversary of Aaron’s historic night – provided the perfect opportunity. What if Twitter had existed 40 years earlier, we asked? How would Aaron’s record-breaking night have unfolded in tweets?
One of our staffers, Tom Stinson, crafted the reconstruction. "Whoa. 2 dudes just hopped the fence and are running the bases with the Hammer."
Melanie Gibson, one of our online producers, helped us edit the tweets and worked closely with Ryon Horne, one of our videographers, to identify the visuals. And we paid close attention to the timing of the tweets. For instance, we sent out a tweet “announcing” that Aaron hit No. 715 at 9:07 p.m. – the exact time Ruth’s record was broken.
Our efforts didn’t break Twitter – after all, this wasn’t Ellen DeGeneres’ group selfie from the Oscars. But our special content and our yearning to “make it happen” certainly resonated with readers.
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“Baseball is only a pastime, a sport, an entertainment, a way of blowing off steam. But it is also the national game, with an appeal to Americans of every race, color, creed, sex or political opinion.”
– Jackie Robinson
The Twitter Tale, the videos, the digital-only sections, the poster pages of Hammerin’ Hank and the other extras helped mark the beginning of baseball season.
We’ll be offering plenty more.
On April 27, we’ll launch a weekly Braves Extra section as a bonus to our subscribers. The section won’t appear in print, but because subscribers have full digital access, they’ll be able to find it every Sunday on our Today’s Paper app.
On May 4, we’ll debut a national baseball section featuring poster pages, player profiles and notes on every team. Our “Baseball Insider” is another subscriber bonus and will appear every Saturday on our Today’s Paper app.
If you’re at the ballpark, swing by our kiosk at Section 228 to learn more about our digital products and the extras we’ll be offering – not only with the Braves, but with all of our coverage.
More importantly, this provides us with an opportunity to hear from you. We baseball fans, after all, share a common passion – and language – over this “national game.”
All of which might explain why there seems to be as many quotes about baseball as there are baseball players.
My favorite this season doesn’t come from the archives of DiMaggio, or Lasorda, or Ryan or Robinson. Instead, it comes from someone who sent this message after reading our “Twitter Tale”:
“Whoever had the idea to do this is a genius and deserves a raise.”
Our sports editor shared that quote with me – and I’ll certainly be sharing it with my editor come raise time.
