Looking at the Game of Baseball from all ends of the Spectrum
Tim Lincecum isn’t done on mound this year yet. As the cover star for Major League 2K9 video game, he went through a motion capturing session for the game technicians.
For the “mo-capping”, Lincecum wore a spandex suit (for which he will get the end of no heck from his teammates, I’m sure) with reflective markers placed all over his body. The markers would reflect light from 56 cameras from around the stage while he pitched from the makeshift mound.
After two years, Major League Baseball will be discontinuing the use of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology for streaming its games and on-demand content.
In its place, MLB Advanced Media will replace it with the more familiar Adobe Flash player. Adobe has won a two year contract starting with the 2009 Spring Training Games.
Search technology expert (and baseball fan) John Battelle writes on his website Searchblog about his attempt to search on Google for the NLCS schedule.
Results were mixed depending on the search words he used. And sometimes the best result was a paid link.
Some might find this kind of thing a bit esoteric and techy but I eat this stuff up.
With the new rollout of Firefox 3, those at MLB Advanced Media may be a bit frustrated.
You see, those who use Firefox 3 and want to see MLB’s videos using Microsoft Silverlight which they went to last year, may be experiencing problems. The new release of Firefox 3 does not support the current version of Silverlight.
Word has it, though, that the second version of Silverlight will work with Firefox 3. Unfortunately, it is still in beta at this point. Unfortunate for MLB and unfortunate for the fans who use FF3 and don’t wish to trust a beta release yet.
Firefox has a browser share of anywhere around 15-25 percent (maybe higher for MLB’s target audience. then again, maybe not). Mozilla hasn’t pushed Firefox 3 out yet opting to let browsers download the new version voluntarily. But it will only be a matter of time when FF 3 will be the standard.
As for me, I like Firefox 3 and I’m going to either going to find a way to make it work or find a different way to watch my content.
MLB is pushing their apps for not just the iPhone it seems.
I was in Chicago over the weekend and ran across these creepy looking walking advertisements for Blackberry’s application for MLB.com so I took a photo of one of them with my cell phone.
There were two of them doing their thing by Watertower Place and they had the web address for MLB’s app for the Blackberry plastered on the front.
For you lucky dogs with an iPhone: this is a video of Jeremy Schoenherr of MLB.com giving a demo of At-Bat, a new MLB application for the iPhone at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference 2008.
It “lets users access statistics and information about who’s pitching and batting, as well as video highlights in near real-time”.
Major League Baseball is moving to put instant replay in effect for baseball as soon as August. At this point, the instant replay would be used for potential home run balls only.
The question is: Do we need instant replay and more importantly, do we need it right now?
Many are divided on the issue, there’s no doubt about it. Lou Piniella has always been against the idea. Skipper Lou says:
“I don’t think it’s needed at all, to be honest,” Cubs manager Lou Piniella said Friday. “How many times do you see players make errors? Baseball has talked about speeding up the game. It’s all you hear. All of a sudden, they want instant replay? You’re going to have slower games and more restless people in the stands.”
My biggest issue right now is the way they’re handling the way the whole issue. When was the last time Major League Baseball has made a major change in the rules of baseball in the middle of the season? That just isn’t done for a variety of reasons.
Continuity of the rules.
Granted, this isn’t going to happen a lot but saying that is a self-defeating argument in my opinion. That said, rules are set for a season and baseball sticks with those rules for the duration of the season.
Chance for Unbiased Discussion
The offseason is the time to hear the pros and cons from this issue from the experts rather than it getting fast tracked by MLB during the season when they can use the media to their advantage. “See, see! Look at the bad call last week against Team X!”. Opinions get muddled and logic gets thrown out the window.
Personally, I’m against the idea of instant replay. But if we (and by we, I mean MLB) are going to entertain the idea of it, let’s do it carefully and let’s not be hasty about it. By all means, don’t be changing the rules in the middle of the season.
The APBA baseball league I’m in, the Illowa APBA League, is a face-to-face league. Considering that we play a 162-game schedule and that we have managers in Iowa, Illinois and Pennsylvania, we do pretty well to get all our games played.
Our schedules do play tricks on us though. When Teddy Ballgame couldn’t make it to the last IAL get-together in May, those of us scheduled to face his Chicago Champions were left to our devices to find ways to get our games played against him.
Teddy had a intriguing idea, though. Why not play using our video webcams?
Now, I’ve played APBA over the phone. And I even remember the old days when we used to send each other instructions over snail mail and play our home games solitaire. But I have to admit playing via video over Skype interested me so I thought I’d give it a try.
So Tuesday night, I fired up my Logitech webcam, connected to Skype and dialed up Teddy who was already online. Once we got the connection established over Skype, it worked pretty well. There were times that the video was a bit jolting but audio was clear as a bell.
This new format however, didn’t help my hapless Thunderchickens. We lost all six games against Teddy and his Chicago Champions. Just look at Teddy and the superior look on his face in the screencap above. I’ll tell you if we we’re playing face-to-face…
The first night I had the cam attached to the monitor. The second night, I had it attached to the stand that came with the cam. That was in hopes I had a awesome dice roll and I could easily give him a good “in your face” view of it. Alas, we didn’t have too many good rolls I could do that with since I think we led for a total of about 2 innings for the whole six game series.
Playing APBA via webcam doesn’t replace the real thing but in a pinch, it was best alternative I’ve come across. We were able to banter back and forth and talk about the latest in baseball news, my trip to the Big Ten Tourney. He could even say hi to the wife and kids.
Great idea, Teddy. But we hope you can make the IAL weekend next time.
This past Saturday the IAL stepped into the future playing the first ever series over SKYPE. The IAL is a 10 team draft 30+ year old dice baseball league, games are played using the board game APBA, a predecessor of Strat-O-Matic. You can see a complete baseball register of the Illowa APBA League here.
League members are from the Chicago area, the Quad Cities area, the Champaign area, and Pittsburgh. We play a 162 game schedule, face-to-face, we get together three times of year for the out-of-town series, and play local guys throughout the year. Our May get together will be on the May 17th weekend, I cannot make it, so we tried SKYPE.
It worked like a charm as the Green Rock Bombers hosted the Chicago Champions. Greg Maddux, the league’s all-time winningest pitcher (today’s his birthday, mine too, also the Baseball Zealot is three years old today – Happy Birthday to All!), took the bump for the Champs vs the Bombers Carlos Zambrano. Grady Sizemore opened the game with a leadoff single as Chicago took a 1st inning two nothing lead, but trailed after one 4-2. Not to be denied the Champions scored 11 enroute to a three run victory.
Last year’s first place finishers, the Bombers are retooling this year, while the Champs are poised to make a run at their 11th Championship, although we haven’t won in over a decade, boy that seems like a long time ago.
SKYPE is great technology for realtime audio & video. The picture & sound were clear, although my opponent kept asking if I could put a 25 year old female in front of my webcam. It was like we were sitting right across the table from each other. There was even the advantage of Mike being able to smoke in his basement, while my kitchen remained smoke free, blowing smoke at the camera was humorous rather than aggravating.
With the new season almost upon us, we all need ways to keep up with our favorite sport. Some ways are more instantaneous than others.
For those with Blackberrys, MLB has offered a way to put a icon to the mobile version of the MLB web site on your Blackberry.
There are two ways to do it:
With your Blackberry, go to this URL and follow the instructions.
http://wap.mlb.com/blackberry
Download the PC client from MLB.com and install it on your desktop computer. Make sure your Blackberry is connected via a USB cable.
I honestly don’t know if this doesn’t do more than just put a link on your Blackberry screen but it does look nice so give it a try.