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The Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) are excited today about announcing a new project: a virtual Home Run Derby in Second Life that’s being held in conjunction with Major League Baseball’s own Home Run Derby, on Monday, July 10, at 5pm SL time (8pm Eastern). In fact, the virtual derby will not be a separate contest, but will be “a real-time Second Life re-enactment” of the real thing, featuring avatars for each of the eight Derby players — Major Leaguers competing to see who can hit the most home runs over the course of two rounds.

I haven’t heard what the technology is behind the re-enactment, whether it’s something like the virtual Wimbledon created by some IBM researchers, or something completely different [UPDATE: see this post for more on that]. The stadium the Sheep have built (pictured above), a re-creation of Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, where the Derby is being held, is certainly impressive. Presumably to combat lag caused by overcrowding of SL regions, a “limited number” of tickets to the event will be on sale via the Electric Sheep’s retail site, SLBoutique for a whopping L$1,000 — actually only about US$3. (Tickets go on sale at 7am SL time — 10am Eastern — tomorrow morning, July 6.)

But will anyone actually show? Hardcore baseball fans will presumably want to watch their home run heroes in flesh-and-blood 3D, which they’ll be able to do on ESPN. [UPDATE: Electric Sheep Chris Carella now reports that the Derby will indeed be streamed into the Jumbotron in the virtual stadium.] The SL event will probably be an interesting use of virtual space and a good opportunity to hang out with your friends (if you can all get tickets), but I’m betting baseball fans will tune the Derby in on their other screen.

The stadium, on the other hand, has huge potential. The Sheep press release says the stadium — and the inevitable souvenir shop attached to it — will be “open to the public following the event,” but it’s not clear on whether it will be open Monday only, or will become a persistent fixture of Second Life. (I’m going to check with the Sheep and get back to you on this. [UPDATE: see this post for more on that.]) If the latter, it would be great to make it available for some kind of organized competition. Even better would be for the Sheep to build the technology into Second Life that allows residents to show up and play a baseball game at the virtual PNC Park. It would be a big home run if Major League Baseball were to allow that kind of thing in their virtual stadium.