Kate Longenecker of Perrysburg had hoped to be watching Major League Baseball as part of the MLB.com Fan Cave crew, but instead she was in the control room at Fifth Third Field, running the scores, stats and television graphics for the Mud Hens’ home opener.

She’s fine with that.

“I’ve only ever gotten anywhere with an optimistic attitude, so I was depressed for only a day,” she said about not making the final cut in the Fan Cave contest.

So despite not getting to go to spring training, or move into the New York City apartment where her job would have been to watch big-league ball games and talk about it on social media, she’s filing the contest under “fond memories” and “learning experiences” and getting ready for another Mud Hens season.

“It looks like I will be running the graphics from the production booth in the suites,” Longenecker wrote in an e-mail. “Keeping track of pitch count, score, player stats, and anything else graphics related for the television broadcast.”

Longenecker — a Philadelphia Phillies fan — was one of 52 people around the country who made the next-to-last cut out of about 10,000 applications for the Fan Cave. Those 52 hopefuls all sent in videos making their cases and asking for fan votes on the MLB.com Fan Cave page. From those, 30 were chosen to go to spring training and from those, the final nine Cave Dwellers were chosen.

This year’s cave dwellers will include Alexandria “Alex” Justice, an Indians fan from Cleveland, and Ben Wietmarschen, a Reds fan from Cincinnati.

On her video, Justice, 21, claimed that, as a student and fan of “The” Ohio State University, “I’m the nuttiest fan there could be” — and as an Indians fan on top of that, she’s one of the “most dedicated heart-filled fans in baseball.”

For his video, Wietmarschen, 28, listed his five favorite personal memories of baseball, which include chucking a roll of toilet paper at his Uncle Ted when the Reds won the World Series when he was 6 and spilling a Mountain Dew from one luxury box into another at Cincinnati’s stadium at age 10.

“I wonder if [the people in the other box] remember that,” he muses in the video. “I’d like to go back and apologize.”

Longnecker said she had been rooting for fellow Phillies fan Christine Lorigo of Boston, who made the cut for spring training, and thought Tigers fan Lindsay Beaver of Sterling Heights seemed “super passionate” and would have been “fun to watch in the Fan Cave.” Tigers fan Jay Tuohey of Clawson, Mich., was also a top-30 finalist.

But from her perch at Fifth Third Field, Longenecker said she’s ready for another season.

She’ll start work about three hours before game time, making sure all the information she needs is at hand for the game and for the half-hour pregame show.

She does similar chores for the Toledo Walleye hockey team and for Buckeye Cable Sports Network. She said she prefers the faster pace of hockey games, which also lets her be more creative with her scoreboard and stat displays and, not to mention, the Walleyes’ winning season made the job more fun.

“When the team is good I just get into it,” she said.

She’s hoping to “get into it” with the Hens as well this year.

“I’m just hoping for more wins!” she wrote. “Last year when we hit August and realized we were out of the playoffs it just wasn’t as fun. … I’m looking forward to seeing some of the faces back from last year like [right fielder Ben] Guez, [left fielder Dan] Kelly, [shortstop Argenis] Diaz — and of course getting to know the new guys. I’ll definitely need to practice spelling [Matt] Tuiasosopo, our new third baseman.”

If not a winning experience, it was a learning experience for Longenecker.

“It felt great to have support from so many people from Toledo, back home in Pennsylvania, and of course from Phillies fans all over the country,” she wrote. “I learned how useful social media can be, especially when reaching out to people you wouldn’t normally have access to.”

Ironically, she cut back on her Twitter use “because during that month it kind of consumed my life!”

Tags: Alex Justice, Alexandria Justice, Ben Wietmarschen, Fan Cave, Kate Longenecker, MLB, Toledo Mud Hens

This entry was posted on Monday, April 29th, 2013 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Mud Hens, Mud Hens Opening Day, Sports.
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Kate Longenecker makes it her business to find fun ways to tell you the score. Now she’s asking you for a little bit of help to step up her game.

The Perrysburg woman is one of 52 fans of the national pastime who made the almost-final cut — from more than 10,000 applications — for Major League Baseball’s “Fan Cave.” The final winners will live in a Greenwich Village apartment, watch baseball and tweet, post and pin their opinions on social media and MLB’s own website.

“Who wouldn’t want to be paid to watch 2,400 baseball games, the opportunity to live in New York City and chronicle it on social media?” she asked, laughing.

Longenecker, like the other almost-finalists, made a video to state her case and it’s posted on the MLB Fan Cave website. Just scroll down until you see her in her red Philadelphia Phillies T-shirt and ball cap, then watch her spoof the Gangnam-style dance she hopes to replace with custom handshakes for each sports celebrity she meets.

“I do think I’d be an entertaining person to be in the Fan Cave,” she tells prospective voters.

Wait a minute? The Phillies? This is Toledo! Doesn’t our Major League heart belong to the Detroit Tigers?

Well, Longenecker is “Philly-born and raised,” as she says in her video, but moved to Toledo with her college boyfriend when he found a job here. She shopped her love of sports around and landed jobs with the Mud Hens and the Walleye, doing electronic graphics that keep fans up to speed on the stats that drive the games. She also does color commentary for Buckeye Cable Sports Network.

So if you’ve got the picture — fun puns are her specialty — “It’s what I make and what I create and what I do. You can be very creative with it.”

She’s hoping for more than a stretch in sports fan heaven from the Fan Cave, though. The whole idea is to get a group of fans who create buzz for the games through Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, in addition to what they say on MLB.com. That’s an exploding trend sports organizations and sports broadcasters want to tap — Feb. 3’s Super Bowl XLVII set records for the number of fans watching the game streamed live on the Internet, and set a number of other records related to social media, according to the news site Mashable.com.

Longenecker’s also looking to get in front of that trend; she’s hoping to get some new ideas — graphics, tweets, posts, what have you — for how she lets Mud Hens and Walleyes fans know the score.

She’s already learned a thing or two — namely, how fast something can get going and growing online. Appearing on Twitter as @Klongen, she’s already developed friendships and “friendly rivalries” with some of the other finalists.

Voting at MLB.com ends Feb. 13; from the 52 videos, voters select 30 finalists who go to spring training in Arizona and then to the Fan Cave.

Tags: Baseball, contest, Fan Cave, Kate Longenecker, Major League Baseball, MLB, Perrysburg, vote

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2013 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Baseball, Community, Sports.
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