Looking at the Game of Baseball from all ends of the Spectrum
Ok, I canāt help but see this little gimmick at the first Phillies home game as a subtle message about the inherent possibilities of technology at baseball games ala instant replay
Robot to throw first pitch at Phillies game
But Iām a cynic at heart.
Sports columnist Terence Moore has it right when it comes to umpires, instant replay and when it comes down to it, fan respect. And he quite succinctly makes his point in his first two sentences of his article posted today (my emphasis):
This umpire mess has to stop. Not the questionable calls or even the horrible ones, but the whining over it all.
As a person who works in a technology field, I should probably embrace instant replay over the inconsistencies of human judgment, But I donāt. Call me a traditionalist but thatās just not how baseball is played.
My special concern is WHY the idea of instant replay is gaining so much ground now.
1. The mob mentality.. Now that the issue has come to light, many fans have seized on it and thrown it back into the umpsā face. Instead of āwhere are your glasses, Blue?ā fans are yelling āReplay! Replay Replay!ā It gives them something else to be angry about.
2. Major League Baseball, in their effort to appear to please everyone all the time (without really doing so) is slowly jerking their knee and responding. āSee weāre doing something about it?ā
(In complete fairness, I know of plenty of knowledgeable, even-thinking people who support the idea of Instant Replay and have logical, thought-out reasons why they support it. I certainly would not clump them in with the first group.)
Whether or not one supports Instant Replay should not give a fan license to treat an ump with disrespect as Terence Mooreās piece describes in detail. Now, I go to 20 or so college baseball games a year and sure, Iāve been known to call out an ump on a questionable call. But though I do not like his particular decision at the time, he has my respect for the tough job that he does.
Even Frank Robinson from the MLB commissionerās office weighed in on the umpiresā treatment.
"From fans, players, managers, coaches and front office people, I’ve never seen so much hostility toward umpires that I’ve seen this year. "All of this (umpire bashing) is very, very unfair. Do they miss calls? Of course they do. One thing people forget: Umpires are human beings.ā
So letās proceed with the Instant Replay discussion carefully and thoughtfully. And if youāre lucky enough to be out at park this year, donāt take it out on the ump.
Jeff Sullivan from Lookout Landing did an admittedly unscientific but still somewhat interesting study on Lasik eye surgery on ballplayers and how it affected their hitting.
His post has some significant stats. Again, not scientific but his results??
Based on our very limited sample, it seems that LASIK eye surgery can indeed help hitters perform at a higher level. Which we’d expect, given that a good hitter has to be able to, you know, see.
Hmmā¦ very eye opening.
On Wednesday, Fox Sports and DirecTV in cooperation with Major League Baseball did a dress rehearsal of sorts of shooting a baseball game in 3D. It took place in Angels Stadium and they used college players to help in their effort to create a baseball game atmosphere.
The reason for the practice run? Fox Sports plans to use this 3D technology at this yearās All-Star Game.
Letās get this out of the way. Only DirecTV subscribers will be able to view the Game in 3D. Should every work as planned though, it will be a coup for DirecTV since many might subscribe just to see the 3D experience.
With all the disclaimers, it still is quite a feat,
As part of July’s coverage, Fox will deploy two sets of announcers, one for the conventional 2D broadcast that most viewers will see and one for DirecTV’s 3D coverage. I asked Goren if the announcers doing 3D will require special training in the new technology. "It’s an interesting question," he says. During game action the announcers focus is on the field of play. But during replays, "do the announcers put on 3D glasses to look at the 3D monitors? Right now we don’t have an answer for that."
During the Consumer Electronics Show back in January, the big buzzword was ā3Dā. Every provider, manufacturer, and supplier that could conceivably get away with it, would incorporate ā3Dā into their selling points. Itās clear the 3D is the up and coming technology.
Yet, Iām still trying to get a handle on it. Not intellectually so much but is viewing a baseball in 3D something that really appeals to me. Now these words will most likely come back to bite me in the future. In a couple years, everything we view will be in three dimensions (ādude, you still watch that flat thing?ā). But right now, the baseball traditionalist wants to watch a game like I always have (especially without Tim McCarver).
But as someone who is in the technology field, I admit I am curious. Will it be gimmicky like Fox Sportsā Diamond Cam or provide a genuinely pleasurable viewing experience? I guess weāll see.
If you use Twitter, I assume you are on for on two reasons. To glean information and perhaps to give your own analysis/info on what you know.
If you are a Chicago Cubs or Chicago White Sox fan and on you are Twitter, there are some must-follow feeds to get the most out of the social networking tool. This is a general guide that will help you get started.
Letās start with the basics.
Here are the official twitter accounts for the two major league teams. Follow these if you want the latest news from the Cubs and Sox. Keep in mind that anything from here will most likely be links you will see on mlb.com or press releases. Certainly nothing too juicy.
Chicago Cubs @cubs
White Sox @whitesox
Since you all can can read the articles on mlb.com on your own, perhaps of more interest to Chicago baseball fans is search hashtags. This will allow you to follow all tweets from baseball fans having to do with say, the Cubs. Without going into a whole tutorial on Twitter (you can find a good one on hashtags here), suffice to say that any tweet with the ā#ā sign before the search term before it will be included in the search query and folks will see it when they follow that query.
So the ones that weāre interested in are:
Chicago Cubs #cubs
Chicago White Sox #whitesox
Keep in mind that Twitter programs (like Tweetdeck, Tweetie or Twitterific) take advantage of hashtags much better than the web version of Twitter.
Let me throw out the general Major League Baseball Twitter links out there while Iām on the topic.
MLB on Twitter @mlb.
To follow the Major League Baseball hashtag, itās #mlb
Cubs fans will want to follow MLB Cubs beat writer Carrie Muskat (@carriemuskat). Similarly, Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) who covers the Sox for mlb.com is must for White Sox fans.
For the Cubs fans, here a few more.
Iowa Cubs @Iowa Cubs
Official Cubs Vine Line @vinelinetwitter (not too active yet)
Len Kasper and Bob Brenlyās Official Twitter @lenandbob
For the White Sox:
Charlotte Knights @KnightsBaseball
Sun Times Sox blog @CST_sox
I was thinking of throwing up some baseball blog twitter links for both teams but so there are so many I wouldnāt be doing justice to some good ones out there. Just know that most all of them out there have a twitter presence and itās easy to follow them. Not only is it an easy way to get notified when they update their website but more importantly, you get some good insights from the bloggers in 140 characters or less.
Also, there arenāt too many active Chicago players on Twitter right now (no, the Carlos Zambrano you see is a fake). Former White Sox OF/1B Nick Swisher (@NickSwisher) has an account is quite active (and interesting). Fantasy Baseball Dugout blog has a list of current MLB players on Twitter. Keep in mind not all players with accounts are active or even post themselves.
Iāll throw one more in here for kicks just because itās been in the news lately. Ozzie Guillen is on the Twitter thing now. And so far, he been having fun with it. So has the Twitter community because his Tweets have been quite nonsensical at times. Iāve said it beforeā¦ Iām not a Sox fan but I kind of like Ozzie Guillen because I think he makes MLB a little uncomfortable. This Twitter venture on his part is just one more example. You can find Ozzie on Twitter @ozzieguillen.
I hope this help those of you baseball fans who are just starting to use Twitter. If you have other relevant Chicago baseball people to follow on Twitter, please let me know.
At the end of each year, Google (as well as other search engines) does an analysis on what was searched on for that year. Rising trends, falling trends, trends in all aspects of our society. Google calls this trend analysis project āZeitgeistā and they just released their results for 2009.
Looking at the fastest rising trends in the United States overall, weāre not going to find anything baseball related, sorry. Actually, nothing sports related. Twitter, Michael Jackson, and Facebook headed up the top ten of general keywords. Among fastest FALLING was āolympicsā but that makes sense as 2008 was naturally a big year for it and it was going to trend downward.
What IS more relevant to our interests as baseball fans is search trends within the realm of sports. Fortunately, Google does parse that out for us. Here are some of the highest searched keywords within United States in sports.
Among baseball teams, there are no surprises. Thereās a reason for that East Coast bias:
Taking a look at all sports stadiums, three baseball parks make the list:
The Yankeesā ballpark gets the #1 nod for a couple reasons, Iām sure. One, their move to a new stadium. Two, they won the World Series. And three, well, theyāre the Yankees.
Interestingly, no baseball managers made the top 10 list of sports coaches. Nor did any baseball rivalries. Both of them were dominated by college, NBA and football.
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1. red river rivalry (texas vs. oklahoma) 2. michigan ohio state rivalry 3. unc duke rivalry 4. colts patriots rivalry 5. vikings packers rivalry 6. bears packers rivalry 7. georgia florida rivalry 8. giants dodgers rivalry 9. lakers celtics rivalry 10. steelers browns rivalry |
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Interesting that the Packers get searched on two different rivalries.
Thereās more info at the Google Zeitgeist 2009 web site.
With the playoffs here, Dell is pandering to the baseball fan now. For a mere $85, theyāll design your new laptop with your favorite teamās logo.
Pretty cool, huh?
That or you could buy a big team sticker for few bucks and slap it on there. But hey, why be practical?
Those fans who watch Major League Baseball via video streaming are increasing every day and the numbers for the playoff games are even higher.
By now, Major League Baseball Advanced Media has the stats available for the Division Series. On average, 350,000 live streams were served per game. Even more interesting, 36,000 of those streamed were sent to mobile devices such as the iPhone.
These video streams were all subscription or pay-for feeds. MLBAM notes that these per game averages are higher than the 2009 All-Star Game video streamā¦ which was free.
One other pointā¦ the Postseason.TV package is blackout-free (yay!) but to avoid competition with other major networks, the video stream doesnāt give you in their words, āa complete game experienceā.
If Cubs pitchers keep getting hurt, hereās a solutionā¦ baseball robots.
These robots are the creation of a Japanese (of course) professor Masatoshi Ishikawa who is from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo.
The pitching robot throws at 25 mph and hits the strike zone close to 90% of the time. Ishikawa hopes to increase the pitch speed to 90mph. He also wants to introduce the curve ball to the robot. Hey now, be careful of those arm injuries!
Good news for baseball fans who use Boxee. MLB games will be coming to Boxee, the streaming video service.
From the Boxee blog:
We are excited to announce a partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB.com) to offer MLB.TV Premium to boxee users.
MLB.TV Premium on boxee means you can now watch thousands of baseball games, live and on-demand in HD (where available). on top of that, MLB.TV Premium offers DVR functionality to pause and rewind a live game. MLB.com represents a big step for boxee as we hope this is the first of many different live sports offerings we can bring to you. We hope other sports follow MLB.comās lead of giving fans a choice of how they enjoy watching their favorite teamsā¦.
Iāve never used Boxee but if anyone does, Iād love to hear how well this works once it gets up and running.