[Introduction: Brief intro about taking on the project of creating baseball cards for 188 players across 14 teams in the league, and wanting to do it affordably without sacrificing quality.]

The Project: Cards for 186 Players and 14 Teams Without Breaking the Bank

[Overview of the scope: 186 players, 14 teams, wanted professional-looking cards that kids would love, budget constraints that ruled out traditional sports photographer packages at $15-40+ per player.]

Step 1: Scheduling

[Details about organizing a league-wide photo day, coordinating with teams, settling on dates for both primary photo day and makeup day for kids who couldn't make it.]

Getting Team Volunteers

[How you recruited volunteer parents from each team to be responsible for taking photos of their team's players.]

Step 2: Photo Collection

The Photo Day Process

We asked the parent photographers to take the following photos: one photo of each player holding a piece of paper with their name on it (so that we could match the player to the name - the last thing we wanted to do was have player photos mixed up), an action shot and/or a portrait shot - ideally with a real camera but otherwise with an iPhone in portrait mode; and finally, a team photo (with or without the coaches).

"Just Email Me the Photos"

We asked all of the team photographers to email the photos to me, and then I would then go in and upload them myself in the app. I ended up with a different process for each team. Some teams provided the final selection of photos, using the player's names as the filename - that made the uploading process extremely easy. Other parents sent 20 photos per player, all with numeric file names. That took a lot longer because I then needed to make sense of the files and then select a photo for each player.

In hindsight, we should have asked the team photographers to share an album using iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, or whatever they were comfortable with, and provided a little bit more guidance around what to send. A little more work from each team photographer would've cut down on the work on my end in compiling and selecting all of the photos to upload.

Photo Quality

We ended up with the expected range in photo quality. A lot of iPhone portraits, some hobbyist parents with a real camera, and the work of a few working, professional photographers. At the scale these photos are reduced to, the range in photographic quality becomes a lot less noticable, but I think it's pretty clear which are iPhone photos and which were taken with a real camera with a real lens.

The uploading part of the process took very little time - overall Pennant did what it was designed to do - make it easier to create a lot of baseball cards and collect fun "stats" for the players for the back of their card. It was nice to not have to worry about the player data being entered correctly and that we had the names right - each parent was able to confirm that their names were spelled and capitalized correctly, and they entered the data themselves.

Step 3: The Chase - Getting the Last 10 Players

[The reality of running a league-wide project: chasing down photos and stats for the stragglers. How you tracked who was missing, follow-up strategies, and the persistence required to get to 100% completion.]

Lessons Learned About Follow-Up

  • [Tip 1: Set clear deadlines with buffer time]
  • [Tip 2: Send friendly reminders]
  • [Tip 3: Work with team parents/coaches as intermediaries]
  • [Tip 4: Have a backup plan for photos]

Step 4: Creating the Cards with Pennant Cards

[How you used Pennant Cards to actually create the cards once you had photos and information: uploading rosters, collecting player data through forms, using the drag-and-drop editor, choosing designs and team colors, etc.]

In all, thanks to Pennant Cards, it ended up taking one person about 5-6 hours to prepare all 200 cards, from start to finish. This was a huge improvement over what was a massive team effort a year ago, where multiple people took days and days to create the templates and merge the data for each player by hand, not to mention all of the data collection and coordination work.

We only had 6 of players out of 186 that didn't end up with player "stats". Instead of a blank card, those players got a random baseball fact so that they at least have something interesting to learn and share with their teammates. And the team cards all have actual, auto-generated rosters on the back.

Step 5: Distribution - The Paper Bag Approach

[How you packaged and distributed the cards: putting each team's cards and team photos in paper bags for easy distribution, coordinating with coaches to get bags to teams, etc.]

The Result: Kids (and Parents) Loved Them

[The payoff - reactions from players when they got their cards, photos of kids trading and comparing cards, feedback from parents, what made all the coordination worth it.]

Final Cost Breakdown

[Actual costs: per-player cost breakdown, comparison to what photographer packages would have cost, total savings for the league.]

Key Takeaways for Anyone Doing This

  • Plan for 2 photo days - [why makeup days matter]
  • Use shared folders, not email - [reiterate the cloud storage recommendation]
  • Build in extra time for stragglers - [reality of getting 100% participation]
  • Get team volunteers - [can't do it all yourself]
  • Simple distribution works - [paper bags were fine, no need to overcomplicate]
  • The end result is worth it - [seeing kids' reactions]

Ready to Create Cards for Your League?

[CTA: If you're organizing cards for your team or league, Pennant Cards makes the process straightforward. Learn more about how it works and get started. Link to relevant pages.]