Since 1990, Zach Hample has visited 54 different major league baseball stations where he has come away with more than ten thousand free baseballs. In April 2005 he began blogging about his exploits on his blog at mlblogssnaggingbaseballs.wordpress.com. His first post dated 4/14/05 proclaims, “The last time I went to a major league game and did NOT catch at least one ball was on September 2, 1993. That was 383 games ago, and I still get nervous that I’m going to get shut out.” Since then, he has used his blog, along with his YouTube channel to document his obsession, and to share his knowledge of the ‘game within the game’ to his 250k plus subscribers. While many scholars have focused on the marketing value of the micro-celebrity (Marwick, Senft), there is also value in examining those with a more niche following. Hample, for example, capitalizes from his passion, by charging his fans $1000 plus expenses to attend a game with him. The current paper contextualizes the niche micro-celebrity using Hample as a case study.
About the presenterDonald Snyder
Donald Snyder is a principal lecturer in Media & Communication Studies at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) where he teaches courses on media history, theory, and practice. His research focuses on beta testing, discourses of production and consumption in computer mediated environments, educational technology, and amateur digital archivists.