While his baseball career is still in the relatively early stages, Nick Swisher is one of baseball’s most interesting characters.
He was a major part of one of baseball’s most important books, Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball,” and he was at one time he was viewed as the potential much-needed star of both the Oakland Athletics and Chicago White Sox. Better yet, he’s currently thriving on a team where many players struggle – the New York Yankees.
And while his stats may not make him seem worthy of having an app – a .249 career batting average and no All-Star appearances (yet) – his story and personality are certainly app-worthy.
BeakerBreakers’ Nick Swisher (99 cents) is the latest in what’s becoming a long line of athlete-specific apps; while much of it is standard for the genre, there are some nice surprises here.
The app’s opening screen displays Swisher’s current stats, featuring both his daily and yearly totals. You would think this would be standard in all professional athlete’s apps, but often the focus is on something other than their profession.
There’s also plenty of the extracurricular stuff, from his Twitter feed to Flickr photos to YouTube clips of him. There are also polls you can vote on, such as “What’s the best team to watch Nick beat?” and Top Five lists of his favorite things, like morning rituals and ballparks.
The app’s design is both minimalistic and pleasantly simple. You can choose to turn off any of the aforementioned pages in the settings menu, and instead of a main menu that links to everything, you just scroll through the pages you want.
It’s impossible to talk about any app like this and not mention or compare it to the Chad Ochocinco – Official App. What that app does so well is bring Ochocinco’s over-the-top personality into your phone, while the same can’t be said for Nick Swisher.
So while Swisher may be one of the more interesting people in Major League Baseball, you wouldn’t be able to tell that from this app. Sure you’ll get the occasional wonderfully quirky tweet (‘I LOVE PIE!’), but more often than not you’ll get more of the same.
With that said, I would still recommend the app to Yankees fans and Swisher fans alike. It definitely provides a nice look into his daily life and there’s enough content to justify the very cheap price tag.
But outside of those fans, the app isn’t likely to make too much noise; unlike the player himself, too much of the app is more of the same.
