Next: A FanGraphs Television Advertisement

New sports and culture site Grantland has a commercial on ESPN. A television commercial for a web site full of advanced analytics, popular culture criticism, and Bill Simmons screeds. This has to be some sort of milestone. Either it’s a high-water mark, that moment when the dorks of the web got so close to the mainstream that they appeared, for sixty seconds at a time, on a major cable sports network — or it’s the beginning of new possibilities for cross-platform advertising.

Either way, as the supreme navel gazers that we are here at FanGraphs, it’s time to turn inward. It’s time to storyboard the FanGraphs commercial.

EXT. SUBURBAN COMMUNITY

Floating above a subdivision, a certain house catches our eye for reasons unclear… at first. As we get closer to the house, we realize there’s a green glow coming from somewhere. We move ever closer, slowly and tentatively, until we are in the house. Upstairs, a young girl is sleeping soundly. We travel down the hall to the master bedroom, where a father snores while a mother watches television with the sound low. Back into the hall, and down the stairs, we come upon a pit bull, passed out on his back on the couch, legs twitching from an active dream. Turn the corner, and the lights are off in the kitchen, but the green glow is back. It’s coming from the basement door. Slip under the crack in the door, and we know we’re close. We slow down because the basement is basked in a green glow and there are strange sounds coming. Step by step, we slowly descend. From behind we see BOY and a flickering green screen. We hear some CLICKING.

BOY
(softly)
oooh that’s right

… a few more CLICKS …

BOY
(a little more discernible)
oh poke that thing

… some RUSTLING …

BOY
(in a lusty low talking voice)
oh reach, reach, yeah reach for it

… upstairs, some wood CREAKS, but the boy doesn’t notice …

BOY
(talking now)
Yeah show em your big stick!

… more sounds, but boy is getting excited …

BOY
(a little too loud)
Oh man, third base, here we come, here we come

… was that a door opening …

BOY
(pretty much yelling now)
THAT IS A SERIOUS SWING PERCEN-

MOTHER
(concerned)
What’s going on down here, Max?

Two scared eyes turn frantically find the boy’s mother at the top of the stairs. He slams a book shut and turns off the screen, but the camera turns back just quick enough to catch the FanGraphs logo disappearing into the middle of the computer screen, taking with it the green glow.

An abrupt return out the basement window finds us back above the house. We notice that the rest of the houses on his street spell out FanGraphs from above. The ‘F” is no longer green, but a slight green glow surrounds the other house-letters. The disembodied voice wraps things up.

DISEMBODIED VOICE
FanGraphs. Where all the nerds hide.