Players launch online community to interact with fans

The 2015 season may be over, but Major League players have launched their own new online social community, Infield Chatter, to better engage with fans around shared interests.

Sure, Dee Gordon is happy to discuss winning the 2015 NL batting, total hits and stolen base titles when he visits, www.InfieldChatter.com, but the speedy infielder is just as interested in sharing his latest download or playlist if you're interested in similar music.

"Infield Chatter is awesome. They made it more than just a place to post pictures," Gordon said recently. "I can go on there and talk to fans about the latest music and my favorite artists. It's been fun to find out who everyone is listening to!"

By launching this first-of-its-kind social community, players hope to engage with fans, and each other, on trending topics and shared interests -- on and off the field -- enabling fans to discover more about the person beneath the baseball cap.

Gordon, along with fellow All-Stars such as David Ortiz, Josh Donaldson, Eric Hosmer, Adam Jones and Jake Arrieta, is among the many players participating in the launch of Infield Chatter. Over the past couple of weeks, social media followers of many of these players received invitations to join them inside the Infield Chatter community. 

"Players are excited to get the opportunity to work with a platform that makes it easy to have real, unfiltered conversations between celebrities and fans," Jones said. "These are real fans in there who are talking about what matters to them. I like being a part of that by talking about what's important to me."

Beginning today (Nov. 20), Infield Chatter is open to all fans, 13 years old and older, who want to be part of a casual environment with Major League players where they can share their passions, thoughts and ideas on trending topics.

Each player has a personal page on Infield Chatter where fans can learn more about that player's interests away from the ballpark. By joining Infield Chatter, fans can see behind the statistics, and find things in common with players. 

"The fans are a big reason we do what we do. Having opportunity to uniquely interact with fans is a home run!" Hosmer said.

Infield Chatter is hosted on the popular Place platform, and is available via Web browser and Place's mobile app. Place is a community platform that hosted LittleMonsters.com -- the official social community for Lady Gaga -- and has expanded to include more than 12,000 communities today.