Posts Tagged ‘baseball’

Diana Chiafair Roberts has won the 4th Annual Baseball’s Hottest Wives competition sponsored by fantasy baseball site Fantasy Baseball Dugout.

2011 was a disappointing season for Brian Roberts and the Baltimore Orioles, but hopefully things are looking up a little for the Roberts family now.

In the closest competition in the four year history of the popular Baseball’s Hottest Wives contest, Roberts’ wife Diana Roberts edged Derek Jeter’s ex-fiancee and Charlie’s Angels star Minka Kelly to take home the coveted title. The vote went to the ninth inning with the margin of victory for Roberts, the ex-Deal or No Deal suitcase model, being less than one percent.

During the year, Baseball’s Hottest Wives nominated numerous wives and fiancees of professional baseball players. The fourth annual Baseball’s Hottest Wives contest registered over 29,000 votes from all around the world. Baseball fans, and fans of pretty women in general, voted via the web site Fantasy Baseball Dugout and via text message voting supplied by text message marketing site 84444.com and Advanced Telecom Services. While Roberts won the overall combined vote, Kelly actually received the most text message votes followed by Roberts, Emily Greinke and Lindsay Clubine (Clay Bucholz wife).

Final votes for Baseball’s Hottest Wives 2011 was as follows:

Diana Roberts — 15.03%
Minka Kelly (Derek Jeter) — 14.21%
Emily Greinke — 10.94%
Heidi Hamels — 10.33%
Heidi DeRosa — 7.67%
Laura Posada — 7.06%
Karina Smirnoff (Brad Penny) — 5.01%
Joanna Garcia (Nick Swisher) — 4.91%
Saeko Darvish — 4.30%
Michelle Damon — 4.28%
Amber Sabathia — 3.37%
Krystle Campbell (Ryan Howard) — 3.07%
Lindsay Clubine (Clay Bucholz) — 2.87%
Jamie Kotsay — 2.85%
Alejandra Tejada — 2.15%
Ashley Eckstein — 1.94%

Brian Roberts has been with the Orioles for 12 seasons and is the longest tenured current Baltimore player. Diana Chiafair married Roberts in January 2009. The brunette beauty was born on Long Island and raised in South Florida. Diana’s resume includes photo shoots for FHM, Sports Illustrated, and Vanity Fair. She has appeared in commercials for Herbal Essence, Dasani, and Virgin Mobile. Brian and Diana Roberts are also active sponsors and regular visitors to the University of Maryland Children’s Hospital.

Previous winners of Baseball’s Hottest Wives were two time winner Heidi DeRosa in 2008 and 2009 and Saeko Darvish in 2010. Heidi is the wife of Giants utility man Mark DeRosa and Saeko is the wife of Nippon Ham Fighters pitcher Yu Darvish.

Baseball’s Hottest Wives has been featured in major newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Houston Chronicle. The staff of Fantasy Baseball Dugout has a regular sports talk radio segment that covers fantasy baseball and fantasy football and airs on many ESPN Radio stations on the weekends.

Fantasy Baseball Dugout is a fantasy baseball tips and information site published by Olympic Internet. Text message marketing for the voting is supplied by text message marketing company 84444.com and Advanced Telecom Services.

One of the things that Advanced Telecom Services’ president Bob Bentz does in his personal time is coach baseball.  Bentz is also a regular user of the 84444.com mobile messaging product to reach his youth baseball players.  In this blog post, Bentz wonders why every baseball coach doesn’t use text messages to reach their players when a rainout occurs.

The best way to notify baseball players of a rainout is by text message.

I have been coaching baseball for 16 years.  It has been a big part of my life.  Sure, it takes a lot of time, but perhaps I’ve made a small impact on young men in our area so that makes it all worthwhile.

My first opportunity to coach was in Little League.  One of the most fun evenings of the year was when the coaches got together for the preseason draft of talent.  In the early rounds, it was all business, with coaches monitoring spread sheets of ratings of pre-teens generated by their previous season coach.  The strategies used by the local coaches were not much different than the ones utilized by the general managers at the Major League Baseball winter meetings.

The later rounds were met with a much different rating system.  In the later rounds, the players were all inept so coaches were more apt to rate their selection based on GLM’s — good looking Moms.  But, no matter how good looking their Mom was, there was one kid that would never get picked until the final selections.  These were the ones that didn’t have email!  There’s no way a coach wanted to add to his work by having to make a phone call to notify the player’s family that practice or a game was cancelled due to rain.  Email was just so much…easier.

This weekend, my Junior Legion baseball team had a home and home series against another local opponent.  My club was home on Saturday and we were to play away on Sunday.  After the conclusion of the Saturday game (we won 5-1 by the way), the other coach and I talked about the impending rain storm predicted to hit the Philadelphia area on Saturday night.  We agreed that the outlook for playing the Sunday game was not promising.  The opposing coach lamented about how he dreaded having to call 18 players if the game was rained out!

“What year was this guy living in,” I thought.  I hadn’t been calling players for over a decade, or at least since every player on the team had email.  And, a few years ago, I even gave up email, preferring to send a broadcast text message instead.

Email is so yesterday with today’s teens.  If I were still sending email to my baseball players, they’d find out a week from now about the cancellation, because that’s about as often as teenage boys check their emails today.  That’s why I communicate with my players on the medium of their choice–text messages.  Moreover, a text message reaches the player immediately no matter where they are.  94% of all text messages are read immediately upon receipt.  Email certainly can’t make that claim!

If Little Leagues, Cal Ripken leagues, American Legion baseball teams, or travel baseball teams are looking for the best way to reach their players, then the only way to do that in today’s fast moving society is with text message broadcasts.  

I can’t imagine coaching a baseball team and having to make 18 phone calls when a game or practice was rained out.  

Perhaps, that other coach is still having his team use wood bats too.