Following guest post wonderfully written for us by: Aaron Garcia

Home Field Advantage and its…Advantages?

One of the big buzz words in sports is “Home Field Advantage.” We hear announcers and sports writers reference it all the time, usually in big games. Home field advantage, according to some, can mean the difference between a win or a loss. Home field advantage is handed out as an award for having the best record in the league, come playoff time, because it is that important. Fans cheering for you, not against you, the weather just how you like it, and the advantage of knowing how the field plays are all benefits the home team gets. While home field advantage is important in every sport, it is doubly so in baseball. A football field is 100 yards long no matter where you play; a basketball hoop is 10 feet tall in Phoenix, just like it is in Chicago. But when it comes to Major League Baseball, no two stadiums are alike, giving the home team a unique advantage when playing at their field.

Pitchers Ball Park

If you watch enough baseball, you will no doubt hear the phrase “this is a pitcher’s ball park” and you might wonder what it means. It basically means that it is harder to hit homeruns in this park, giving the advantage to the pitcher/defense. Why is it harder to hit home runs? It could be because the fences are further away than in most other stadiums, the wind usually blows in from the outfield, or the air is really thick, making it hard to power a homer over the fence. Which ballparks gave up the fewest homers in 2010?

1. Target Field – Minnesota Twins: 36% fewer home runs than average.
2. Safeco Field – Seattle Mariners: 33% fewer home runs than average.
3. Oakland Coliseum – Oakland A’s: 30% fewer home runs than average.

Hitters Ball Park

On the opposite side of things are what we call hitters ball parks. I’m sure you can guess why hitters love them, and it’s because they give up more home runs than average. Factors that make it easier to hit home runs include short fences (as in Yankee Stadium’s famous short porch in right field), thin air (think Denver, CO), and wind blowing out to center. So which stadiums gave pitchers fits and made hitters drool?

1. U.S. Cellular Field – Chicago White Sox: 54% more home runs than average.
2. Coors Field – Colorado Rockies: 50% more home runs than average.
3. Yankee Stadium – New York Yankees: 42% more home runs than average.

How Teams Prepare

In every sport, a team is built around either offense or defense. Sure, some teams may be good at both, but deep down at their core, they are stronger in one particular area. In most other sports, the decision to build a team around defense or offense is arbitrary. If the Chicago Bulls (NBA Team) decided that next year they wanted to focus on defense and drafted/signed defensive stars, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot because on their home court, there is no advantage to having either. It’s not harder to make a 3-pointer in Chicago or a free throw in Dallas, so there is no rhyme or reason to teams that play good defense, or score a lot of points.

In baseball, however, General Managers must be wary of how they sign and trade for talent. The baseball season is long (162 games) and half of those games are played at home. That means if you play in a park notorious for favoring pitchers, it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to spend a lot of money on the league’s top home run hitters. Sure they might hit more than your current team does, but the advantage wouldn’t be as noticeable as it would be in a hitter friendly park. The same goes for a team that would want to sign the league’s top pitchers in a hitter friendly park. Yes, it will help the team, but not as much as it would if they pitched in a park that favored their strengths.

Want to play small ball (a style of baseball that features singles, stolen bases, sacrifice bunts, etc)? Better to try that approach in a pitcher friendly park rather than Coors Field or Yankee Stadium – you won’t be playing to your team’s strengths otherwise. Home field advantage is one of the reasons why baseball is so much more intriguing to me than other sports. It truly is a game where a smarter player/coach/team can beat the guys with more athletic talent. Every player on the team needs to be headed towards the same goal, whether that’s smashing home runs, playing solid defense, or sacrificing the runner over – and the park in which they play can be a big determinant of their style.

About the Author: Aaron Garcia is the Executive Editor of All Sports Talk, an online sports magazine that covers topics from Pro to Collegiate Sports. Although the magazine covers all major sports, Aaron loves to focus on Major League Baseball. You can also follow him on Twitter @allsportsnet.

The Best Office Space Ever

Well, after working alone in my house for many years (15 to be exact) I realize there is a perfect office space not 1 mile from my house and it only costs me $2.07 per day.

My brother-in-law Paul was kind enough to take me for several hours around our area looking for office space where I could actually see other people during the day. I love the convenience of working out of my house, especially when my kids were young, but for the last several years I have found that it is pretty lonely. Plus, I could use a bit of a dress code enforcement. Office spaces in our area vary greatly, but I knew I didn't want to be in an office somewhere off a main corridor where I would be paying rent to be alone. So I was looking for a communal environment where there were many people in single offices, but were all joined together in an open floor plan, sharing a secretary, and bumping into each other at the water cooler. Well, such a place does exist, and very near my house, the only problem was the very high cost (and the very small size of the office).

Then my sister-in-law Jen, (Paul's wife) suggested an office where she knew many people went every day to work , it was social, nearby, and free~! You all may know it under it's common name of 'Starbucks' I now refer to it only as 'the office'.

It is incredible, everyone there is sitting with a lap top, or some other kind of work and stays there half the day!! Tracy, my Starbucks guru who introduced me to some of the steady gang there, actually has a beautiful office, but comes afternoons to Starbucks to have a place to work and be among other people. It is really an incredible phenomenon, sort of amazes me that Starbucks allows it, but I guess the atmosphere creates a space people want to be in.

I am still working on what actual work is best for me to do there, and am finding that I have a bit of the sense that I should quick finish my work so I can go to Starbucks, but it is a work in progress.

Unfortunately I don't drink coffee, so my $2.07 is the cost of my bottle of water. But I feel that I have to contribute something to the upkeep of this place.


Small business advice for the day:
Sometimes the solutions you are looking for are right under your nose- but you need help from others to tell you to look there!

Only so much creativity to go around

I think I am realizing that as a creative person I have a limited supply. I am often in the mood to create something, but if I am currently already working creatively in one section of my life, chances are I do not have the same interest to be creative in another area simultaneously.

What I am saying is that I can not be in the middle of trying to figure out a unique idea for my dining room currents one day, and then in that same day go into my office and feel the urge to come up with a new baseball design. It seems that I can only be focusing my creative energies one at a time for me really to feel that what I am creating is to the best of my ability. To make something new and unique I have to focus on a creative way to solve the problem. Most of creativity for me is about how to solve a problem in a way that makes me excited about the outcome I've created- if I didn't have to be excited about the outcome, I could solve things quickly, easily, and willy-nilly. Its the result being exciting that takes the energy and the time.

So for me it is not so much that creativity only comes in spurts, but that if I am working on one project somewhere in my life, I have a hard time mustering up creativity at the same time in another area of my life.


Small business advice for me for the day:
In other words, I better lay off trying to figure out what to do for my dining room curtains, b/c I have some baseballs to paint!

Twitter is the answer for small business news!

As a small business, Twitter solves a lot of issues for us. How can we get information across about what we are doing now without bothering our customers?

When Twitter first hit the scene, I did not think it would be something I would join, I mean honeslty, who cares what I am eating for lunch?! But when I began to think about how it could help my business I truly got excited.

Our business, unforgettaballs.com, sends out 4 email newsletters a year that contain info on our newest designs for purchase, happenings, and latest retired designs. We only send out one a season b/c we do not want to inundate our customers with email. But throughout the year, btwn newsletter mailings, there is no way to let our customers know what designs are being currently worked on. We do not put the new designs in our newsletter until they are available for purchase, so it is many months since they have been painted.

Now that we have a twitter account set up for Unforgettaballs, people can choose to follow and get updates of what is being painted right now! It is also an excellent way to get feed back about our latest decorative baseball design ideas.

Looking forward to tweeting!-

unforgettaballs.com

Taking my painting on the road!

As a small business, I do a lot of my painting alone in my studio. I have decided to take the advise of my cousin-in-law Tracey and paint a few days a week out of my studio. My first destination will be to Tracey's catering store where I plan on bringing my paints and folding table, and working there for a few hours. I am not sure where else I will try, perhaps my local Starbucks, where there are always a lot of tables open....I think the important part of this experiment is to see what it is like to paint in a different setting with others around me.

First of all, I am excited to just be in a different location, (I have been painting here for 15yrs, same table, same chair, same wall to look at it!)- but just to be out and around people will be very exciting. I also look forward to feed back on my latest painted baseball design that I am working on, it is always intersting to hear different points of view on your work. Generally I receive most of my artist advise from my husband who knows nothing about painting, but over the years, by fielding hundreds of my painting questions, he has actually gotten to be a very reliable source for opinions.

Luckily, my baseball designs are small, and easily portable. So I will report back with information on how my first excursion went, and if it has added to my creative juices, and need to be with other people, or if it only accomplishes the need to be around other people, without actually getting any artwork done!

To see an artist out painting is really not that unusual, but then they are painting the scene around them, -I may be the first traveling baseball artist painting scenes outdoors of baseball stadiums hundreds of miles away!


http://www.unforgettaballs.com/

Why do I paint better when my desk is clean?

Ok, here is one for the books- I seriously paint better when my desk is clean and orderly. Now I don't mean clean from the 'just Windexed' sense of the word, but I mean straightened up and orderly. Clearly I have issues here. The problem is not that I don't have enough space to paint, it is just that for me a clear desk, offers me a clear piece of mind, and a calm sense of well being.

How crazy is that?! And just to explain it all a little clearer, when my desk is messy, I find it very difficult to focus well on creative tasks, or even just to embark on new tasks. I shouldn't need much space to paint my baseballs, they are relatively small and I work on very tiny details, but this goes well beyond space issues.

My desk is very orderly, stacked with papers in different levels of 'things to do piles'. But by the end of a very busy day, the piles will start to blur around the edges, and until they are all back into some level of organization, I feel very uneasy thinking about continuing to work. Now, make no mistake, the piles don't need to be completed for me to feel organized, they just need to be straightened, and I have to feel that I know what is in each pile so I feel 'on top of them'.

So there is my crazy confession for the week! My goal is to organize my desk every day before I leave it, so I can come to it in the morning with a bright outlook and sense of calm that only organization can give me! For all those other organization suffers out there- take care- you are not alone!

www.unforgettaballs.com

How do you let people know you are out there?

What is the best way to find customers who would be interested in your product? How do you get them to know it exists? In the age where there are fifty gagillion websites, how do you find the people who would want to know about you?

Products don't get much more unusual then mine- artistic baseballs for the baseball fan, or collector of all things unusual!(unforgettaballs.com) But if no one ever sees them, it doesn't matter how cool they are!

There a two main ways I work to get my baseballs seen: PR and Advertising. Lately I have been debating which I think is a more effective way to reach people.
Advertising is great b/c once you pay a specific amount, and then know you are going to get something out there for the public to see.
PR on the other hand, Is much more of a risk. It can cost much more, and at the end of the day you don't know for sure if anything will be written on your product or not. From a money standpoint, it almost seems to make more sense to just pay to have the advertisement, b/c it is a guarantee that people will see something. Unfortunately, you can not deny that it is always more humble to have someone else write about how great your product is then to have you do it!

Small business advice for the day:
Decide how much you would like to spend per year on getting everyone to know what you do. Then take this number and divide it between PR and Advertising. Track for your self which helped more. (Use analytics on your website through google, etc. to track-if you don't know how to do this- get a web master to do it for you.) Don't put your whole budget in just one of these- it is just to risky.


www.unforgettaballs.com