11/02/98 ARMCHAIR BASEBALL FROM THE WEB--OR YOUR STADIUM SEAT

ARMCHAIR BASEBALL FROM THE WEB--OR YOUR STADIUM SEAT

WANT TO OUTMANAGE YANKEE SKIPPER JOE TORRE or order up your own replay of that tag you didn't get to see? Tech companies are descending upon the World Series to strut their stuff.
If you're a frustrated Bobby Cox, you can manage the New York Yankees or San Diego Padres--putting in your own pinch hitters, ordering steals, or sending your starter to the showers--by logging onto www.purebaseball.com. A joint venture of Boulder (Colo.)'s Reality Sports Inc. and Telescan Inc. (TSCN) of Houston, the free site calculates the odds of a successful decision by figuring probabilities, based on its huge statistical base of players' actual averages. The game will be available on the Web for as long as two months after the series' winner is crowned.
And if you're lucky enough to get tickets to the World Series at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, you can sit back and order replays or check out different camera angles from your seat. Williams Co. has outfitted over 300 of the stadium's seats with ChoiceSeat, an interactive, touch-pad television set that allows viewers to call up statistics, highlights, and historical information, or order merchandise. ChoiceSeat, which made its debut at the Super Bowl at Qualcomm in January, also is currently coddling sports fans at the Tampa Bay (Fla.) stadium.
By Ron Grover
EDITED BY IRA SAGER