The New York Times has been busy covering Westport sports figures.
First came the news that Kyle Martino is running for US Soccer president.
Now the paper reports that Bob Bowman is leaving Major League Baseball.
Bob Bowman
The Times calls the longtime Westport resident “the person most responsible” for making MLB’s digital and video arm “one of the greatest success stories” in all of American business.
The 62-year-old will leave as president of MLB business and media at the end of the year.
Under Bowman’s leadership, the Times says, Major League Baseball Advanced Media became “the envy of every sports league and one of the most important companies as the broadcast world transitioned to digital streaming.”
Bam, the paper adds,
has consistently been at the bleeding edge of technology, and transformed how fans consumed sports. Bam bought MLB.com and redesigned the league’s website; centralized and ran each team website; created MLB.TV, allowing subscribers to watch out-of-market games; and created the At Bat smartphone app, “the highest-grossing sports app of all time,” according to the league.
Most important, the technology Bam developed to stream games simultaneously to hundreds of thousands of fans has underpinned some of the biggest internet streaming services. ESPN, HBO, WWE, Fox Sports and Hulu are some of the companies that have hired Bam to run their back-end streaming operations.
Before joining MLB, Bowman served as Michigan state treasurer, and was a top executive at ITT.
(Click here for the full New York Times story. Hat tip: Jeff Mitchell)
I coached Little League baseball with Bob for 3 or 4 years when our older son William was young (he is now a junior at Yale). Bob was just as successful and professional with that town baseball program for many years as he has been with MLB.com. He was indeed a role model with our Westport LLB program. Bob is a class act and deserves all the good press that he gets – should have used a better picture in the NY Times, however 🙂
Well, now you know … the rest of the story.