Take a bad app . . . and make it better

In what is seemingly a strenuous attempt to get young girls interested in fantasy baseball, a company called “A View from My Seat” teamed up with the usually well-regarded CBSSports.com to produce an app called “Baseball Boyfriend.” Here is the gist, as described on the app’s page on CBSSports.com:

Baseball Boyfriend is a single draftee fantasy sports mini game designed for girls. Pick your boyfriend for the season, dump him if he can’t perform and pick up a new BBBF.Boyfriends earn you points daily. Girl with the most points at the end wins.

It gets worse.

Going to the app’s home page brings you face to face with a Q&A that sets the women’s movement back 50 years. To wit:

Who’s The Hottest Player?

Once you go through your little black book and pick out your player you’ll get his stats and the latest news about him. You can date him for along as you like. Maybe he’s just good for one game or he’s the one that you keep all season. It’s all up to you.

Choose Your Stud.

In your little black book is a list of possible Baseball Boyfriends. Pick a boyfriend from your current team’s roster.

This is also where you dump your ex and pick up a new player. As your team roster changes, your selection of potential boyfriends changes as well.

Now That You’ve Picked Your Boyfriend.

If he stays past noon, he’s your BBBF for the night.

Dating History

Through out the season, you can look back at ex-boyfriends and see how long you’ve dated them.

Baseball Boyfriend Rules …

This isn’t your typical fantasy game. We level the the stats between pitchers & batters. Then reward the boys that do something special like, pitch a perfect game, hit for the cycle or hit a grand slam.

Is it better to keep one man all season, or trade everyday? It’s up to you.

As you can tell by now, this is laughably bad and on some level offensively sexist.

However, I’m willing to give “Baseball Boyfriend” a chance, and hereby offer the following “player scouting reports”, “tips” and “rules adjustments” to make the game more realistic/enjoyable for their target audience:

• “Derek Jeter is cute, gets big hits, makes lots of money and showers all his girls with lovely gift baskets!”
• “If the baseball math gets too hard for you, you should draft pitcher Chris Young. He went to Princeton! And he’s tall!”
• “We give extra points if you told us your religion on our signup sheet, then picked someone not of your own faith to be your BBBF!”
• “You get points every time you log in, so make sure you are never far from this app. Your BBBF is like a “Farmville” animal . . . it needs to know that you care.”
  
• “If your hunk goes on the DL, you automatically get a nurse’s badge icon, a sponge and a basin, and receive points for “tending” to him.”
• “If your BBBF ends up in a jail in real life, you can earn 1,000 points by videotaping a plea for his release and posting it on our YouTube channel”
• “Hey girls … if you happen to read one of those “baseball stat” books, and they mention something called VORP, the P does NOT stand for penis.”
• Alex Rodriguez: Drafting A-Rod grants you special “patience of a saint” points.
• “You are allowed one “Not tonight, I don’t feel like it” pass per month, where you can put your BBBF aside and not play the game.”
• Advanced rules: “If you and one of your league members want to share a BBBF for a night, that’s fine with us. You’ll just split the points and have to decide who he goes home with the next morning.”