First off, yes, his name is Coco Crisp. He’s a center fielder for the Oakland Athletics, and he just launched a mobile game.
Called Fro Patrol, Crisp’s free-to-play is available now for iPhone, according to SFGate. Crisp created the design idea — which stars a cartoon version of him dodging baseballs and scissors — while MEDL Mobile and Crazy Cove handled development. Crisp said on Twitter that he will create an Android version if the game does well on iOS.
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Crisp is actually learning computer programming himself via online courses, so someday we might see him release a game that he actually coded. This could lead to a healthy second career after he retires from baseball, as the mobile game industry has grown to $30 billion, with revenues expected to exceed the console industry’s this year, according to market researcher Newzoo.
Of course, not all baseball players have had success in the world of gaming. Former pitcher Curt Shilling famously went bankrupt with 38 Studios, a company that only released one game, 2012’s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The company was also working on a massively multiplayer online role-playing game when it shut down.