Telescan's flagship product is something called Wall Street City, a Web site that offers investors free access to real-time quotes, technical analysis, market commentary and investment newsletters. It's like working in the toy department. While starting a subsidiary catering to baseball junkies might seem like a lark, the folks at Telescan insist it is a logical, and potentially lucrative, business move. It's true that baseball fans are a stat-happy crowd. Discussing batting averages, on-base percentages and earned run averages are the grist of most any bull session about baseball.
Fees depend on how many games the customer wants to play during a season.
And the computer keeps track of your players. If you pitched Billy Wagner for an inning and two-thirds last night, you can't bring him back in and expect him to pitch at full strength tonight. Right now, PureBaseball has about 400 customers, but Telescan inked a deal last week that could push that figure into the many thousands. Visitors to the SportsLine site will be able to click directly through to the PureBaseball site. Even if we get just a very small piece of that, it will be nice for us.