Jul 18, 2008 by admin

Featured Team: My Better Is Better Than Your Better

My Better Is Better Than Your Better (name borrowed from this Nike commercial) is not just a group of cocky softball players, but a real life dynasty. With a name like that, you gotta figure this team is full of Josh Hamiltons, Jenny Finches and the occasional Dan Uggla (stellar all-star performance), but in fact, it is simply a group of hard-working media nerds and young NYC professionals with one goal in common: have fun. I spoke with Peter Ehrlich, the captain of My Better is Better Than Your Better about his experiences with the team, it’s past success, and what lies ahead.

 

My Better Is Better Than Your Better

 

Pete is one of those guys people my age strive to be: handsome, smart, athletic, and a few inches away from a million dollars. Pete was introduced to Sportsvite through a friend and has been using the site to manage his team for the last two seasons.

My Better Is Better Than Your Better has been around for the last four years, bringing home three of the last four titles in their Zog Sports league. His explanation for why the team has been so successful is the simple reason that everyone is there to have fun. By stressing such a high morale, no pressure, and maybe a few skills here and there, Pete can practically write the book on intramural success.

While Pete mainly uses Sportsvite for scheduling purposes, he does a great job of keeping the team page up to date with photos, videos, and game updates which helps promote the up-beat atmosphere that the team strives on. Thorough use of the Sportsvite functionality is what grants My Better Than Your Better with this week’s mythical “Team of Week” honors.

This decision was made easier after Pete enlightened me with a story involving a story from a game that occurred within the last few weeks. After taping the first few innings of the game with the hope of catching some web gems to upload on the team page, the cameras were turned off. In the next instant, a line drive nailed one of the female players in the face. Man, i wish we could have that footage to show you. That would be awesome. Instead here is a clip of MBIBTYB in action (back in ‘07 when the team name was Pumpkin Eaters!)

 

This beautiful blog post was penned by Sportsvite summer intern/wannabe meathead Eric.

Jul 17, 2008 by admin

Chicago’s All Stats Sports Is Always Keeping Score

Scott Snower is the head of the All Stats Sports League based out of Chicago. Scott runs a cool league where every single player of every team gets a ridiculous number of stats kept for them and updated on the website (allstatssports.com). On top of the near-fanatical stat keeping, Mr. Snower and the other league-heads do a phenomenal job of making the amateur athlete feel like a pro, as they have even finagled permits to play at the awesome field at UIC.

“My lifelong friend and I really played in all the intramural leagues Chicago had to offer, and we felt that they were missing something,” said Snower. “They just kind of told you to show up and pay the fees, and that was that. So when we started All Stats Sports League, we wanted to do something that set us apart.”

And Snower did just that. All Stats Sports League started three years ago, and they now run multiple Softball leagues (12 and 16 inch style), a Basketball League, and a Bowling league. With each league comes an incredibly in depth stats page showing every statistic imaginable for each player, ranging from Slugging Percentage, to Fielding Percentage, from 3-pt percentage to points/game.

“We do player of the week awards, end of the year awards, all that stuff. We want to make it as interactive as possible - as fun as possible,” said Snower. “In Chicago you’ve got about 6 months of good weather - from April to October - so come February and March people are itching to play. And once the minute April comes around we’ve got people out there ready to go. We just love being out there on the field, everybody has a great time.”

Scott really does a great job running the leagues, definitely check out the website to see the kind of leagues he’s running. I highly suggest anyone in the Chicago area get in touch with him, as without a doubt you’ll have the most complete sports experience playing in the All Stats Sports League.

Below are some screenshots of some of the stats pages from his site so you all can see how literally the phrase “All Stats” is taken by Mr. Snower and his staff.

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ASL Stats

This blog post was contributed by Sportsvite intern extraordinaire Pat.

Jul 15, 2008 by brian

VitaminWater’s Homers In The Hudson

It’s All-Star Week in New York City as this is the historic final year of Yankee Stadium. Like everything NYC, it’s pretty much expected that the festivities this week will be as huge as a Josh Hamilton batting practice home run. On Monday morning we decided to check out VitaminWater’s “Homers in the Hudson” event at Chelsea Piers.

Here’s the deal. The first two hundred people at the event were given the opportunity to hit a baseball off of a tee into an inflatable five foot high glove that sat on top of a 25-foot-high giant VitaminWater bottle that was floating on a barge in the Hudson River 150 feet away from the tee. Inside the inflatable glove there was a small hole. Hit it threw the hole and you could win yourself one million bucks.

Here’s a photo I snapped to help visualize the setup.

 

vitamin water “homers in the hudson”

 

As we were waiting in line nobody was even coming close to the glove. Oh by the way, David Wright, Joba Chamberlin and David Lee were the three guys who hit before me. At one point I couldn’t help myself but yell out to Wright to “keep your swing level”.

I was with a few colleagues from CBS College Sports and we were strategizing on how to take home the cool million. I decided to go splitzy at 500K with my buddy Jaquet if either one of us did it. I also pledged to jump into the Hudson to celebrate. I then told intramural all star Blake that he was going to miss the ball, hit the tee and send it into the water ruining the event for the rest of us.

Jaquet’s swing was respectable but fell a bit short. I confidently stepped up to the plate and tried to enter the zone I was in back in pre-K when I was a t-ball all-star. I hit a solid shot that had the distance and height but was pushed out to the left. Alas, look at that text book weight transfer!

 

Homers In The Hudson

 

Blake popped up and did hit the tee but unfortunately not to a laughable degree. At the point Wright stepped back up to the tee to hit a bunch more. Finally, the last person in our group, Big Petey, stepped up to the plate. His swing looked perfect and as the ball travelled through the air I started tapping Jaquet on the shoulder. It felt like watching a perfect golf shot that was dead on the flagstick. The ball landed in the glove just a few feet away from the actual hole. The place went crazy and VitaminWater reps were all over Pete, but as they like to say in the biz “close but no cigar“. Actually, Pete did get a $100 prize and the admiration of his boyhood hero Ryno and a sweet mention in this SI.com article.

Afterwards we stuck around and hung out at the first class event. We ate some complimentary food, downed some VitaminWater, and hob-nobbed with celebs including Russell Simmons, The Naked Cowboy, Fabolous, Ryne Sandberg, Kerry Rhoads, David Lee and David Ortiz. We even thought we saw Christina Aguilera but it was actually Aubrey O’Day. Um, that’s why we run a sports site and not a celeb gossip blog.

Here’s some more coverage of the event from ESPN Page 2 and a great photo gallery from the event.

If Baseball is a game of inches than perhaps T-ball is a game of feet and in that case Pete was oh so close to stealing the show (and the million bucks).

Jul 02, 2008 by brian

George Carlin Talks Sports

Stand up comedian George Carlin passed away last week. He will certainly be remembered for his stinging social commentary and his ability to use comedy to push the boundaries of decency. But in this routine, Carlin is the perfect all-American boy as he rants about baseball and football.

Jun 25, 2008 by brian

Jugar Sportsvite

We saw mucho traffic this week from a newspaper article on Sportsvite in 20 Minutos, one of the largest daily newspapers in Spain.

Here is an except from the article.

Practicar deporte es una costumbre sana y divertida. Pero a veces resulta complicado encontrar tiempo libre y reunir el mínimo de jugadores necesarios para cada deporte. Este problema lo soluciona Sportsvite, una completa red social destinada a todas las personas que practican deportes.
De momento, esta red social sólo se encuentra en inglés

Esta página web ayuda a establecer una red social entre los grupos de amigos aficionados al deporte. Al mismo tiempo, sirve para juntar a personas que normalmente no encuentran con quien jugar.

Read the full article (in spanish) and a hearty hola to all our Spanish members. One of these days we’ll make a Spanish version of Sportsvite.