Baseball Home Openers: Social Media’s Best Shots [PICS]

Baseball Home Openers: Social Media’s Best Shots [PICS]
by Sam Laird on Mashable

1. A head of the game

The New York Mets tweeted this photo of a fan with a Shea Stadium-inspired piece of headwear.

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2. MLB mosaic

Major League Baseball tweeted this collection of shots celebrating the first day of home openers.

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3. Busch Stadium

The St. Louis Cardinals shared this early-morning Instagram of their home ballpark, Busch Stadium.

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4. Two feet of hotdog

Dallas TV reporter Joe Trahan tweeted this shot of "The Boomstick," a 24-inch hotdog now available at the Texas Rangers' home stadium.

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5. Buster's back

The San Francisco Giants shared this filtered photo of star player Buster Posey, who is returning this season from a major injury.

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6. Meet the "Big Kid Dog"

The Los Angeles Dodgers tweeted this photo of the new "Big Kid Dog," which they say "is topped with gooey Mac and Cheese and covered in Fritos."

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7. Center of attention

The New York Yankees shared this photo of manager Joe Girardi being mobbed in the dugout by reporters before Opening Day.

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8. Meme alert?

Twitter user @zoowithroy posted this shot of a really excited Miami Marlins fan.

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9. Wrigley before sunrise

The Chicago Cubs shared this great shot of iconic Wrigley Field in the pre-dawn hours of Opening Day.

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10. Jazzy Jeff in the house

Twitter user @philaphillies was excited to see DJ Jazzy Jeff on hand for Philadelphia's opening day festivities.

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11. Phillies pizza

Twitter user @rynomite57 shared this appetizing pic of a Phillies-inspired pizza.

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12. The start of a storied career

Legendary former manager Tommy Lasorda tweeted this memento from his first Opening Day in charge of the Los Angeles Dodgers, way back in 1977.

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13. Meet the lineup

The Tampa Bay Rays tweeted out a shot of their Opening Day lineup.

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14. Pretty in Pittsburgh

Twitter user @j_rossini shared this great shot of PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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15. Verlander and veterans

Star pitcher Justin Verlander posted this photo to Twitter, thanking a military veterans support group for coming out to see his Detroit Tigers.

The social web lit up with photos recently as another summer at the ballpark got underway.

For fans and players, Opening Day (or night) is always a special occasion — familiar sights and sounds return, and hope for a successful season springs anew. Friday’s game between the Mariners and Athletics in Seattle marked the last of 30 home openers for Major League Baseball teams.

This year, Opening Day festivities were documented on social networks such as Twitter and Instagram perhaps more than ever before. Teams, fans and players all posted shots celebrating the beginning of the 2012 baseball season in a variety of ways.

What were the best shots from Opening Day? Pixable.com is a New York City startup that sorts the most popular and timely of the millions of photos posted to social networks daily. The company provided Mashable with access to feeds showing which Opening Day baseball photos were gaining the most buzz and best capturing the magic of a new season.

Scroll through the gallery above to see a sampling of this young baseball season’s best shots.

Which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.





Source: Mashable.com

Athlete Stock Market StarStreet Launches Daily Fantasy Baseball Game

Money

Athlete Stock Market StarStreet Launches Daily Fantasy Baseball Game
April 5, 2012 by Sam Laird on Mashable

What if you could invest in your favorite sports stars the way you invest in stocks? That’s the premise behind the Boston-based startup StarStreet, where fans stake real money on players, buying and selling shares over the course of a season before cashing out when all the games are over.

The site launched a daily fantasy baseball game on Wednesday, continuing its expansion into the emerging space. StarStreet’s season-long games have already gained it a fair amount of press attention and some big-name investors including Jarr Capital and Ron Conway’s SV Angel. The startup is a graduate of TechStars‘ Boston incubator and has so far raised $250,000 in funding.

It currently has more than 5,000 users, a quarter of which are active daily, and recently won a quick-pitch trade show competition at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

StarStreet‘s innovative stock market-based approach works like this: Users are allowed to deposit up to $5,000 into an account, and attempt to buy low and sell high as players go on hot streaks and statistical slumps throughout a season. The game is zero-sum, so all the money put in gets paid out at the end. For the new daily baseball game (a basketball version was the first of its kind for the site and launched about a month ago), users assemble teams of players to be matched against another user’s players. Players are bought with a fictional budget of $100,000.

Founder Jeremy Levine has high hopes for the daily baseball game after its basketball counterpart had a huge debut, doubling its users base on each of four consecutive days after launch.

“Daily games have exceeded all expectations for us,” Levine told Mashable.

The still-emerging daily fantasy sports game is becoming a competitive space, with sites includingDraftDay.com, founded by a former online poker savant, and FanDuel.com, leading the way by raising a whopping $7 million in investments.

With StarStreet’s own daily games picking up momentum quickly and its unique season-long investment model already in place, Levine believes it’s in a good position to continue carving out its own niche. How exactly its two games balance out remains to be seen, but Levine says the combination provides something for everyone.

“I think it’s tough to say, but it’s going to be a mix of both,” he says. “The longterm stock market game is its own thing, and the daily game is instant gratification.”

Do you think a fantasy stock market where users invest in athletes is a cool idea? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, spxChrome