Bob Cook

Tim Hayden figured he had a great idea with his company Vivid Sky, which created technology so fans attending a sporting event could get up-to-the-nanosecond, finely chopped detail on the game in progress, and everyone participating in it.

And he did. So great, that when Hayden this year began testing his SkyBox service, which uses iPhones and iPod Touches to carry specific Cardinals-related content, at the Champions Club section of Busch Stadium in his hometown of St. Louis, he noticed that fans throughout the park were already using their cell phones and other wireless whatnots to do more than yak like yahoos and wave like morons when someone called from home saying, "Guess what — you're on the TV now!"

"We found that as far as the number of fans that have their own devices is larger than I was thinking," Hayden said. "With what they have been experiencing with those devices — each fan has their own different experience. Some may be more interested in statistics, some might be into infographics. We have found that people are creating their own experience with it."

The Internet and mobile technology, as Hayden is well aware, is changing the nature of the fan-team relationship, at the stadium and elsewhere, by endlessly feeding insatiable fans what they want more than Dodger Dogs and Fenway Franks — any and all information about the franchises they follow, and the sports those franchises play.

No longer must a frustrated fan spend his hour car ride in traffic waiting on hold to get through to Buzz and the Fat Man, or whatever sports talk radio host is around at that time, to ask why the local nine is so awful. And that's not just because rising gas prices mean that frustrated fan is taking the bus. No, that frustrated fan can go online, perhaps while still on the bus (though hopefully not if he's still driving), to gather all the statistical information his eyeballs and brain cells can stand to find out exactly why it is the local nine is so awful, and then post that opinion to a message board to bat the research around with like-minded fans.

With the Internet, a fan can be as smart as he or she chooses to be.

"I think the Internet is essentially a giant check/balance against old-school sports fan idiocy," Michael Schur wrote during an e-mail interview. Schur's day job is as a writer for NBC's "The Office" and the portrayer of Mose, Dwight Schrute's silent cousin. The sports world knows Schur as the portrayer of the not-so-silent Ken Tremendous of Fire Joe Morgan, a web site devoted to debunking the bunk put forth by stat-hating shrews like the site's namesake.

"If someone yells at me in a bar and says Pat Burrell is killing the Phillies at the plate because he strikes out too much, all I need is an iPhone to show how ignorant that is." If you hang out at the kind of bars where people yell at you about Pat Burrell, you can always cite, as Schur might, how year after year after year after year he is one of Philadelphia's leaders in slugging percentage and on-base percentage.

"And the gobs of data also allow smarter people than I am to invent new ways to analyze that data, and get more and more refined results from it."

That results in fans who, in the main, are far more savvy about their favorite team or sport than they were only five years ago, especially out-of-town fans, who have more than the local newspaper's box scores to tell them how their favorite franchise is doing. For the teams and sports, that intensity of interest has the benefit of turning some casual fans into hardcore fans, and turning some hardcore fans into — well, what's the level beyond hardcore that doesn't imply total loss of perspective?

"It’s really important to make the distinction between well-informed and rabid," said Mike Swan of Los Angeles. When Swan is not helping businesses analyze their chances of being destroyed in an earthquake, fire, meteorite fall or some other cataclysmic event, the Bay Area native writes as "Taj Adib" for Athletics Nation, an Oakland blog that hit the big-time once general manager Billy Beane started granting it interviews. "There’s a distinction between emotionally tied to a team and being informed in what’s going on. It makes you a stronger fan, and I would argue a more passionate fan."

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