It’s a hot June afternoon. In the temporary office of Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), the company in charge of Major League Baseball’s 31 websites, electric fans shoo tepid air around bunkers of cardboard boxes, struggling with a decidedly minor league air-conditioning system. Dozens of twentysomethings crawl over one another, scurrying to prepare for tonight’s games and to post the latest news. Cal Ripken Jr. announces that he will retire at the end of this season. The office buzz spikes with whispers of a trade: Ugueth Urbina, ace reliever for the Montreal Expos, might be moving to the Bronx as part of a trade to bolster the Yankees bullpen. (Six weeks later, he’s traded to the Boston Red Sox instead.)

Here, on the ground floor of New York City’s Chelsea Market, two dozen writers, editors, designers and producers show up seven days a week to stage an instant replay of what working at a dotcom used to be like?hopeful young people burning through a reported $50 million faster than you can say Doug Mientkiewicz.

This is the heart of what Major League Baseball wanted and believed it needed: a centralized, integrated website that would replace the individual team sites that had sprung up over the past few years. A website that would be all things baseball to all baseball fans. A website that had features that worked as advertised and had the potential to generate revenue for its 30 member teams. Now, as the World Series

approaches, it’s clear that MLBAM has done much more than put baseball online. It has changed the way baseball does business, replacing winner-take-all with a more cooperative model, one that might never have been born if not for the opportunities presented by Internet technology. The only question left is, Will that new business model work?

Change-Up

It all started in spring 1999, when Major League Baseball signed a three-year agreement with SportsLine.com, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Internet company that produces its own sports news site as well as sites for other pro teams and leagues. For its part of the deal, SportsLine agreed to develop and maintain the league’s site (www.majorleaguebaseball.com), sell the advertising, and handle the site’s functions for moving merchandise. In exchange, Major League Baseball and SportsLine would share the revenues generated through sponsorships, advertising and e-commerce. The arrangement was like many that Bob DuPuy, MLB’s executive vice president for administration and general counsel, had seen before. And DuPuy believed that Major League Baseball was selling itself short.