by Carson Cistulli - April 30, 2012
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Sometimes readers will ask me — on the present site, on Twitter, on the lawless streets of America — they’ll ask me, “Hey Carson, will you keep me abreast of products that might be of some use to me, as a consumer of base-and-ball?”
To which query I’ll respond: “You want me to keep you a breast of products like that?”
To which they’re like: “Yeah, abreast.”
At which point, I’m like: “A breast?”
And then they’re like: “Yes. Abreast. It’s a real English word, and has nothing to do with the female anatomy, like you’re clearly pretending it does.”
In any case, my answer to the original question is: “Yes, but probably only, like, a month after such a product has been released, because what am I, a machine?”
A thing that fits all of the above criteria was brought to the author’s attention over the weekend in the form of this tweet:
You know how the Red Zone channel only shows you all the important stuff? Check out MLB version here with mlb.com/fullcount
In fact, some cursory research reveals that the operator of the MLB Twitter account is not lying. MLB Full Count (link) is a video service (in collaboration, it seems, with Yahoo) that provides “look-ins” to games in progress — and, it would also seem, highlights of completed games. Also, it’s free.
The grainy image embedded here (the sort of image that one could, if one were so inclined, embiggen merely by clicking) is intended to indicate not only that (a) the author is a lifelong subscriber to The Good Life, but also that (b) MLB.TV now appears to be live on PlayStation 3 — which, by the Transitive Property of Home Electronics, suggests that it’s now available on other connected devices (Apple TV, Roku, Xbox 360), as well.
The audio options appear to be functional, too: I listened to part of Tuesday’s Red Sox game with the audio feed from Red Sox Television, and then switched over later to Red Sox Radio.
Once upon I time, in these very pages, I posted an RBI Baseball recreation of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. This would be a very Internetty occasion to link back to that post, but I don’t feel like searching for it. Apropos of this, this way comes an electric rendering of the famous home run by Kirk Gibson, one of our most hilarious MVPs, in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
What follows is a thing that delights. What follows is a Thing That Contains Multitudes:
The highlight, you may have noticed, is not the home run itself, but rather what occurs at 8:16, when Gibson, in the words of Vin Scully, makes his leg “quiver like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly.”
Ancient papyrus texts and the earliest cave etchings make unmistakable references to HVAC systems and their power to save humanity. As we learned in succeeding years, the world was at once saved, propelled forward and curated by dutiful monks in their scriptoria and the wholesome, restorative power of air conditioning, which was invented by Patrick Henry, Jaco Pastorius and Nipsey Russell in 850 B.C. Shortly thereafter, the same trio invented baseball and then combined the two on the streets of Houston, Texas, U.S.A., Earth:
There are many reasons we can’t have nice things, but only one reason we can. That reason is air conditioning and its sexy possibilities.
by The Common Man - December 22, 2011
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I don’t mean to depress you. I don’t want to bring you down. I don’t want to ruin your holiday season.
But no matter what you do… No matter what happens to you… No matter what you receive under the tree or in your stocking…
You will never be as happy as Carson Cistulli was in 1989 to receive VCR Baseball.
This is not a failing on your part. It’s simply a fact. No one has ever been this truly, perfectly, unadulteratedly happy before. Read the rest of this entry »
“This was a childhood favorite of mine. Now it just really fu*king pisses me off.
If you enjoy hopelessly outdated video simulations, liberal and spirited use of the F word, pretend baseball, and a gamer’s discontent, then the following is for you:
This was once a good thing, but it is now a bad thing. Every day is better than the next.
by Carson Cistulli - October 20, 2011
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Those who watched Game One of the World Series will be aware — and those who didn’t watch will learn right now — that FOX experimented with a thermal-imaging camera during their telecast Wednesday night. The cameras, supplied by Australian Warren Brennan, are designed to detect heat — including the friction-type of heat generated by a ball hitting a bat, for example.
Using our vast resources, NotGraphs has purchased its own thermal-imaging camera and used it towards, if not nefarious, then at least generally irreverent, ends.
For example, here we find the image of Mike Napoli included in Robert J. Baumann’s debut post at NotGraphs:
Using thermal-imaging technology, however, we are able to locate the various “hot spots” in the image.
While the heat emanating from head of the swimmer to the left — and from Napoli’s (ahem) lower body — is self-explanatory, the reader might be confused about the warm area below Napoli’s chin and neck. Amazingly, this is due to the friction caused by the considerable rate at which Napoli’s chest hair grows.
Staying with a friend who doesn’t have cable but does have an iPad, so it was time to see what post-season baseball on the ‘Pad would look like. It’s also been a long couple of weeks on the road, and my thoughts no longer come fully formed. Here, then, are my notes, which taken in sum can provide a review of MLB At Bat ’11, the iPad app from MBL.tv — or at least hopefully they will.
* Man this resolution is terrible. And I can’t figure out how to improve it. Is this my problem? Am I already this old? Am I fat-fingering ‘e-mail thingermerbobbers’ after my dial-up finishes screeching? I can’t be. Can I put this in the review?
* Chase Utley is so dreamy. How can he be so ruggedly handsome and yet finely coiffed at the same time? Is it the pomade? Is it the soul patch? And then his game is so saber-friendly. If only he weren’t a Phillie.
Who among us has not struggled with a gadget in the manner of a baboon straining to crack open a coconut? Who among us, I say!
While I fear and loathe robots as much as the next man, it may, I fear, be the digital camera that is the first contraption to go “Skynet” and kill us all. As Gouverneur Morris admonished us, “When the computers take over U.S. Cellular Field, then you’ll know war — a final, determinative war — is afoot.”
More than three weeks after being shut down by Sony for security reasons, the PlayStation Network appears to be functional again, allowing those of us who use it (i.e. the Network) for MLB.TV to go back to complaining about unconscionable blackout rules and choppy feeds.
Note that returning to full functionality isn’t quite as easy as snapping your fingers (unless, that is, it takes you 10 or so minutes to snap your fingers just once — in which case, you’ll feel right at home). Each user will likely be prompted to do a system update and to reset his password to something that’s longer than 37 characters with at least one reference to Goethe’s oeuvre.
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