Red Hook High School and Marist College graduate Travis Miller is a cave dweller. In a really good way.
Miller is one of a handful of people selected to partake in Major League Baseball’s annual Fan Cave, an online multimedia presence that aims to mix “baseball with music, pop culture, media, interactive technology, and art,” according to its website.
The Fan Cave is staffed by nine bona fide baseball nuts, all chosen through tough competition. From the more than 25,000 entrants in the Fan Cave annual contest, the field is whittled down to 50, who have to survive a fan vote to get to the final round of 30. The final 30 then spend a few days at baseball spring training in Arizona, surviving a battery of interactive challenges to determine who among them would best represent the vaunted MLB Fan Cave.
And lo, Travis Miller, a Chicago-based sports writer for the Associated Press, lifelong Mets fan and hometown boy, was among them this year.
It was his third year of trying. He didn’t make the cut in 2011 and only made it to the round of 30 in 2012; the video that accompanied his entry was a humorous look at his prior attempts called “The Five Stages of Fan Cave Failure.”
Miller told The Observer that getting the invite to ultimately join the Fan Cave was an enormous weight off his shoulders.
“I was very relieved. I was speechless when I picked up the call, I couldn’t get any words out. I was like ‘Thank you. Yes. I accept.’ It was very relieving and very exciting because I’ve been in Chicago for three years and my family’s all from Red Hook and upstate New York. So it accomplishes two goals: this thing that I’ve been trying to do for three years, and bringing me closer to home,” Miller said.
Miller is going to focus on expanding the social media and Internet presence of the Fan Cave. “If you look at the social media presence for the Fan Cave now, just two years in, it’s great. It’s a very big reach. But if you look at the social media numbers for the Fan Cave as opposed to Major League Baseball, they have not even cracked, like, 10 percent of the market,” Miller said. “I want to market it as a broader, more inclusive thing. Now they market it as a place for players and celebrities. And I think there are other people around baseball who are very close to the game—like beat writers and announcers who are the best at what they do, just like the product on the field.”
Miller added, “I’ve been in the Chicago media for three years, I know people like that, that I can bring in with the ballplayers and the celebrities.”
Winning a spot in the cave doesn’t mean Miller can just hang out there, however. Cuts are made to the Cave Dweller crew intermittently throughout the season, until only one cave dweller is left.
But Miller said that the thought of leaving isn’t on his mind right now. “I – we – are all just going to enjoy the moment for now,” he said.
Miller added there is one potential hiccup in his winning the cave spot, and that is how his shift from media professional to professional fan back to media professional will be seen by his peers.
“I’m a Mets fan, but I don’t cheer for them when they’re out at Wrigley or something like that. Going from professional to fan is risky, but I’m getting to know a lot of people, and they’re getting to know me and my work ethic,” Miller said.
He is a graduate of Marist College’s sports communication program. His family still lives in Red Hook.
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