Reality Baseball: Fans Call The Shots

Minor League Team Uses Web To Allow Fans To Choose Lineup

(CBS)  Baseball is said to be America's number one pastime. But second-guessing the coach is a very strong number two.

Fans always think they can do a better job.

CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports from Schaumburg, Illinois, where one professional team – the Schaumburg Flyers – is giving back-bleacher coaches a chance to put their skills to the test.

Ever since July, thousands of fans of this suburban Chicago minor league team have been logging onto the Web to vote on the lineup for each game – becoming virtual team managers – more or less.

It's a first time ever experiment in democracy on the diamond.

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Click here to submit your lineup card.

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"Do you know as much as the manager of The Schaumburg Flyers?" asked Schlesinger, as he caught up with one enthusiastic fan, found hollering her advice from the sidelines, after going online with her daughters to input their choices for the next game.

"Probably not," says Terri Ring, an admission that doesn't dampen her enthusiasm. "We vote forty, thirty times a day... Somebody said that's the great tradition of Chicago: vote early, vote often!"

This is not fantasy baseball - it's reality - part of a web-based reality show focused on the Flyers. In a ceremony reminiscent of Donald Trump's intonations of "You're fired!" and "You're hired!", the Flyers' starting lineup is delivered on camera, just before game time, to Andy McCauley, the Flyers' long-suffering manager.

He doesn't always like what he sees.

Is this any way to run a baseball team? Maybe not, but it is - the will of the people.

As it turns out, building democracy on the baseball field is only slightly less complicated than building democracy in the real world. And there have been a few bumps along the way.

Like the time the fans made the catcher, Ryan Walker, play third base.

And just what does he know about playing third base?

"Third base? Well, I played [it] when I was about eight years old," says Walker.

His long-delayed return to that position worked out about as well as the fans' other innovation in coaching: sending the centerfielder, Eric Cole, to first base.

"I was a little scared because I wasn't used to it," he recalls.

The Schaumburg Flyers lost that game and crashed to the cellar of their division.

Normally the fans might call for the manager's scalp with a record like that. But that would be under the old rules - you remember: the ones where the decisions were still made by the manager.