Home--Base Pages

At a dinner party Thursday night, Michael Weiss rued the ground ball that trickled through the legs of Bill Buckner. He correctly identified “No No Nanette” as the Broadway musical staged with the proceeds of Harry Frazee’s sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees.

Buckner’s error cost the Red Sox a World Series victory 14 years ago. Frazee, the cash-poor Red Sox owner, sold off Ruth 80 years ago. The true Red Sox fan never gets over it, and Weiss is a fan.

“But I’m not a fan of redsox.com,” he said.

That makes Weiss, whose Venice firm designs commercial Web sites, an ideal tour guide for fans venturing into the world of baseball on the Internet. Weiss, chief executive officer of Imagistic Media Studios, and Marcelo Ziperovich, chief creative officer at Imagistic, agreed to critique the Web sites of the Angels and Dodgers--and, yes, the Red Sox.

The challenge for Web designers, they said, is to lead fans to the information they desire without throwing everything up on the first page they see.

“You don’t want to be confronted with 2,000 choices and no idea of where to go,” Ziperovich said.

That said, the two men clicked onto angelsbaseball.com. They liked the stylish wave across the top of the home page, but they recommended the Angels condense the information to one screen--more links to other pages, less text on this one--rather than ask fans to scroll down or risk missing something.

“It’s a little on the overwhelming side, but it’s clean,” Ziperovich said.

They liked the score box and radio link at the top, allowing fans to check the score of a game in progress and click to hear the live broadcast, although they found no explanation that the prominent “E-mail Mario and Daron” icon referred to broadcasters Mario Impemba and Daron Sutton, who read and respond to e-mail on the air.

Tickets? Easy to find, easy to order. Merchandise? Easy to find, but the selection is extremely limited, and Weiss considered the store display almost amateurish, as if the Angels bought generic e-commerce software rather than blend the merchandise pages with the rest of the site.

Still, the Imagistic team suggested fans willing to click here and there for a few minutes would be rewarded.

“This site has a ton of stuff on it, and getting around is quite easy,” Weiss said.

The dodgers.com site drew raves for the distinctive blue that instantly identifies the site with the Dodgers and for a few special touches, including baseballs that bounce as you click through the site, games that kids can print and play--in English and Spanish--and memorable radio calls, including Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run and Sandy Koufax’s 1965 perfect game. (The Angels provide radio clips too, but only through 1984, and with no World Series appearances and no Vin Scully.)

Weiss recommended the Dodgers merge the “ticketing” and “online ticketing” sections so that fans wanting to buy online do not click on “ticketing,” find out how to order by phone and mail only, and give up. Weiss also said the Dodgers ought to merge the seating chart into the ticketing section. He described the team store, with an extensive catalog selection, as “utilitarian--not real fancy, but it does the job.”

Although the home page is crowded and extends beyond one screen, 20 links are provided at the top and to the left, enabling fans to proceed directly to their area of interest.

“They have everything pretty readily available,” Ziperovich said. “If you’re into this team, you can spend a lot of time here.”

Weiss wouldn’t spend a lot of time at the Red Sox site, except perhaps in frustration. The site greets visitors with a recording of legendary public address announcer Sherm Feller saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park,” which is cool the first time but annoying every time you return to the home page.

The home page features one in a rotating series of pictures, though the picture takes up more than one screen. Most subsequent pages lose half the screen to ads and an oversized set of links.

Weiss needed four clicks to get to the schedule. The Red Sox don’t tell fans where to find a seating chart (hidden in the “ticket prices” section), and Weiss was mystified about where the prominent “Club 2000” might lead (mostly information about this year’s team, not some new luxury suites).

Truth be told, this Red Sox fan loved yankees.com, the site of the team he hates.

The pages feature the deep Yankee blue, with each page framed by the legendary arches that adorn the outfield wall at Yankee Stadium. The interactive capabilities are second to none. Most impressively, the home page features four links anchored front and center: schedule, stats, standings, tickets.

“That’s really smart,” Ziperovich said. “That’s definitely what most people come to the site for.”

Said Weiss: “This is a classy-looking site. This is a very expensive site.”

There you go again, a Red Sox fan talking about how much money the Yankees are spending. Baseball tradition, Internet-style.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Major League Baseball Team Web Sites

Need an online baseball fix? Fans have lots to choose from, including team web sites or www.majorleaguebaseball.com

AMERICAN LEAGUE

Angels: www.angelsbaseball.com

Baltimore Orioles: www.theorioles.com

Boston Red Sox: www.redsox.com

Chicago White Sox: www.chisox.com

Cleveland Indians: www.indians.com

Detroit Tigers: www.detroittigers.com

Kansas City Royals: www.kcroyals.com

Minnesota Twins: www.twinsbaseball.com

New York Yankees: www.yankees.com

Oakland Athletics: www.oaklandathletics.com

Seattle Mariners: www.mariners.org

Tampa Bay Devil Rays: www.devilrays.com

Texas Rangers: www.texasrangers.com

Toronto Blue Jays: www.bluejays.com

NATIONAL LEAGUE

Dodgers: www.dodgers.com

Arizona Diamondbacks: www.azdiamondbacks.com

Atlanta Braves: www.atlantabraves.com

Chicago Cubs: www.cubs.com

Cincinnati Reds: www.cincinnatitreds.com

Colorado Rockies: www.coloradorockies.com

Florida Marlins: www.flamarlins.com

Houston Astros: www.astros.com

Milwaukee Brewers: www.milwaukeebrewers.com

Montreal Expos: www.montrealexpos.com

New York Mets: www.mets.com

Philadelphia Phillies: www.phillies.com

Pittsburgh Pirates: www.pirateball.com

St. Louis Cardinals: www.stlcardinals.com

San Diego Padres: www.padres.com

San Francisco Giants: www.sfgiants.com

Source: Times research

Other Must-Read Baseball Sites

In addition to team sites, fans might wish to click here:

--espn.com provides major league headlines, scores, statistics and injury updates. The site also features the Peter Gammons gossip column, a must-read for those within the sport. The accuracy rate isn’t as high as you might think, since some scouts and club executives tell Gammons the truth and some use him to float trial balloons and hearsay, but Gammons’ passion for the sport and appreciation of its participants is unmatched.

--baseballamerica.com provides minor league headlines, commentary and prospect rankings, plus daily box scores and updated statistics from every minor league. The site features legendary draft coverage and information about college and high school baseball too.

--sportspages.com provides links to virtually every sports section in North America. By clicking on “baseball links” and then selecting a team, the site also provides direct links to daily coverage--game stories, notes and features--of every major league team.

--cjbaseball.com is personally maintained by Detroit Tiger pitcher C.J. Nitkowski, who allows fans to cover games and post their accounts. Nitkowski also writes restaurant reviews and baseball commentary, including this recommendation that fans go to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs: “There is a reason they average over 30,000 a game at home and it’s not because they are winning.”

--baseball-links.com features 7,128 links, as of Saturday, to virtually any baseball-related topic, from the majors and minors to youth baseball and international baseball, from fantasy leagues and baseball software to coaching, umpiring, trivia and books. As the site says, “If you can’t find what you’re looking for, it probably doesn’t exist.”