When a sellout crowd of 48,231 witnessed the first pitch at the $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium on April 16, 2009, the iPhone hadn't even turned 2 yet. Back then, there was no way of knowing that the stadium's stiffest competition for fans' attention would someday come in the form of omnipresent smartphones.
Eight years later, the social media revolution those phones helped spawn has reshaped the ballpark -- literally.
Social media, most notably Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, has transformed the fan experience, pushing teams such as the Indians and Rockies to innovate on the fly as they try to appeal not only to millennials, but to the next age group -- Generation Z, roughly defined as people born in 1995 or later -- whose lives are focused online.