My boyfriend has a better OPS than yours
ARE YOU FREE TONIGHT? Developers of a new fantasy baseball app think they have a cure for those lonely summer nights ladies. “Baseball Boyfriends,” which was created by The View From My Seat, allows its (presumably female) users to pick an MLB player as their baseball boyfriend (BBBF), receiving credit for the statistics that player provides while one is “dating” him. But, as with many relationships, once the honeymoon period runs out and the player begins to slump again, his “girlfriends” are free to “dump” him in search of a new BBBF. The game is played on what looks like a high school girl’s notebook — hearts and all.
But the app, clearly marketed toward women, has received a fearsome backlash after some initial press — and critics are accusing the game of sexism and dumbing down fantasy baseball for women. The creators, Missy Wedig and Frank
Panko, a husband and wife team, never intended for their game to receive so much attention nor do they believe they have created a cheapened version of fantasy for the women-folk.
It started three years ago, Wedig said, when she and her female friends would spend time watching the Phillies. Each of them would pick out a “boyfriend” and after awhile they began to casually keep track of their stats.
“It was just six girls watching baseball,” Wedig said. “The game grew organically.”
Then, in January, CBS allowed developers to use its statistics database for free, which is when Panko, a developer, created the app for her wife and friends.
Somehow, it took off, and at one point was on the top-10 trending topics on Twitter. From there, the criticism began to roll in.
“I definitely mind it being called sexist. . . . I don’t agree with that either,” Wedig said. “Actually I think I’ve made quite a hard game and marketed it completely to girls.”
CBS has taken a fair amount of heat in the blogosophere for the game, although the company itself has little to do with it besides providing the data. The only other connection tion is that one must have a CBS fantasy baseball team tea in order to play Baseball Boyfriends, according in to Panko, which is an argument in and of itself, he said, against creating a lesser version of fantasy.
“In order to play you have to be playing in a regular (fantasy baseball) league,” Panko said. “(Baseball Boyfriends is) a mini game.”
BEAT THIS
Tom Brady and the Patriots may have left Indianapolis without the Lombardi Trophy, but New England fans didn’t leave Super Bowl Sunday empty-handed.
An adult entertainment website says New England fans beat New York fans in this year’s Porn Bowl. According to the statisticians at Pornhub, traffic to the website in Massachusetts spiked 22% at 11 p.m. on Feb. 5 and 33% an hour later.
In New York, traffic to the site spiked just 16% and 32% in the hours after the game.
The Score, however, has been unable to confirm reports that the demand in Boston for seeing-eye dogs jumped after the Giants’ Super Bowl victory.
Guess Gisele Bundchen wasn’t getting it done either.