Monthly Archives: February 2011

Reviewing the basics. Volume 1

MlbHlSqThe first couple of months of the new year are my standard time to review the content and features of BaseballGB and to plan for the upcoming season. 

One of the tasks I’m working on is reviewing and updating my Baseball Basics for Brits series.  The stats show that this is one of the most frequently accessed parts of the site, not least because the BBC website kindly links to it on their baseball page.  It’s always been an objective of this website to encourage more Brits to take an interest in the sport and having a series that explains the basics in a way specifically written for a British audience is part of this.

I’m going to be updating the first four volumes one per week over the next month.

Volume 1 focuses on how the MLB season is structured.  There haven’t been many changes relating to this since the guide was originally published, although some amendments might be needed in the next couple of years. 

I’ll definitely need to update the list of teams next year to take into account the Florida Marlins being renamed as the Miami Marlins as part of their move to a new ballpark. The sections on the leagues, divisions and post-season will also need to be rewritten if potential changes to them are actually introduced.  It looks almost certain that the post-season will be expanded to ten teams in the near future, maybe for the 2012 season, while the recent discussions in regard to a potential realignment of the leagues and divisions appear to be at the very early stages and may not come to anything for the time being at least.  Continue reading

The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst

The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst (Citadel Press, 2010)  340 pages

BullpenGospelsIt is often said the greatest comedy comes from situations where the characters are trapped together. After reading Dirk Hayhurst’s descriptions of players suffering long bus rides between minor league stadiums, it should come as no surprise this book has plenty of funny moments.
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Unless you are a baseball anorak, you have probably never heard much about Dirk Hayhurst, a right-handed long reliever and spot starter who made it to the Majors with the Padres and Blue Jays.
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His career MLB numbers are certainly nothing special, as he has a record of 0-2 with an ERA of 5.72 in 39 1/3 innings.
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But in The Bullpen Gospels, which covers one of his seasons in the minor leagues, we get a valuable insight into what life is really like for players hoping to play their way to the big leagues.
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The book begins with Hayhurst contemplating quitting baseball. He is a late-round draft pick of whom little is expected and is struggling with his condfidence on the mound. He is living in his grandmother’s basement, much to her disgust, as he cannot stand life with his parents and his alcoholic brother.  Continue reading

2011 MLB.TV subscription details announced

CovHlSqMLB.com has announced details of the 2011 MLB.TV subscriptions, which allow baseball fans in the UK to watch and listen online to Spring Training games, all 2,430 regular season games and the postseason.

Brits who subscribed in 2010 will notice that there are few differences compared with last year’s packages.  That is perhaps a slight disappointment to fans hoping for some new features, but the price freeze will be welcomed by all.

Once again, there are two ‘video’ options for subscribers to choose from: the standard MLB.TV and MLB.TV Premium. 

MLB.TV and MLB.TV Premium

MLB.TV is priced at $99.95 for a year-long subscription, which is £62 at the current conversion rate.  For that investment you can watch and listen to every regular season and postseason game live or on demand.  The picture quality will depend on your PC and broadband set-up, but a HD quality stream is available if you have the bandwidth to support it.  MLB.TV uses “speed detection technology” for optimum performance, adjusting the picture quality if traffic is starting to make the picture buffer.  You can also adjust the quality manually.

MLB.TV Premium is priced at $119.95, or £74.50. For the extra twelve pounds you have the option to pick between the home or away video feed, pause or rewind live games, and watch up to four live games at once in the “Quad Mode” feature.  The latter is probably the main reason why someone would choose to opt for the more expensive package.

The full range of features available are explained on the promotional page on MLB.com.  Some of the useful extras are the alerts that pop up in the media player, showing you highlights from around the Majors and letting you know when one of your fantasy players is coming up to bat in another game. The ‘clickable linescores’ and option to skip to specific at-bats in archived games proved to be a very handy addition to last year’s service and will surely be so again in 2011.

As well as the video feeds, subscriptions to both MLB.TV packages include the Gameday Audio service. This allows you to listen to the home or away radio broadcasts of every single game.  Continue reading

The rights and wrongs of broadcasting rights

MlbHlSqWith the 2011 MLB.TV subscription prices likely to be announced over the next couple of weeks, the recent news story about Premiership TV rights has raised the topic of ‘blackouts’ in sports.

The European Commission Advocate Generals are to recommend that the Premier League’s practice of selling TV rights on a territorial basis in Europe is “contrary to European Union law”.  Currently the Premier League’s rights model allows them to tightly control the live broadcasting of games in the UK, limiting the number of games available and at what time the live games are played.

This effectively means that a lot of games are ‘blacked out’ and cannot be seen unless you are a) at the game in person, or b) picking up an illegal feed from another European country where many more games are broadcast.  It’s that second practice that has led to the current court case and, if the Advocate General opinion is accepted, may no longer be deemed illegal after all.

The story has provoked interest from the David versus Goliath perspective of the pub landlord taking on the Premier League, as well as starting a debate on how the Premier League may change the way in which they sell their TV rights in Europe.  However, it’s the blackout aspect of the current system that is worth considering in relation to Major League Baseball.

Blackouts are often discussed in the States because they can have a significant impact on the ability of sports fans to watch their team.  This is particularly the case with the online MLB.TV subscription. 

It is sold to North Americans as a way to watch “out-of-market” games.  MLB.com shows all 2,430 regular season games, but depending on where you live you could have access to significantly less than this.  For example, one article about the MLB blackout rules notes that fans in the state of Iowa cannot watch the Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Royals, Twins or White Sox. 

In theory, games in a person’s market are blacked out because they are broadcast by local networks, but that’s not necessarily the case and a fan can be blacked out even though they have no other option to watch the game and live miles away from the ballpark in question.  Games are also blacked out on Saturday afternoon and Sunday night as there are national broadcasts during this period on FOX and ESPN respectively.

There are also many barriers to following Premier League games live in the UK.  You have to pay for a subscription to Sky Sports or ESPN if you want to see any Premier League football in the first place.  No league games are showed live on TV at the traditional 3 p.m. kick-off time on Saturday and the games that are broadcast on TV are often moved to different days and inconvenient times that annoy the fans who actually want to go to the games. 

And yet Brits don’t tend to talk about blackouts much.  Continue reading

Team GB to take a Tel Aviv tour to qualify for the 2012 European Championships

Team GBIf you missed the news on Twitter, first reported by Mister-Baseball.com, the Great Britain Senior National Team now know what route they need to take to qualify for the 2012 European Baseball Championship.

Team GB will head to Tel Aviv, Israel, at the end of July for a four-team tournament including the host nation, Lithuania and Georgia.

The many Brits who think of baseball as ‘that rounders game played by Americans’ would scarcely believe such an event could take place. 

Finding out that Great Britain has a team is often a surprise in itself.  Adding Israel, Lithuania and Georgia into the baseball mix would leave people doubting your sanity, but it’s a great example of the varied and diverse baseball culture that, unknowingly to many, exists in Europe.

The news story on the official Great Britain website provides some additional details, for instance noting the respective IBAF world rankings of the four teams.  They would lead you to believe that Great Britain should qualify comfortably.  Certainly they will go into it as favourites and should be confident of progressing, but new Head Coach Sam Dempster will know that taking any baseball team lightly is the first step towards a humbling defeat. 

I’ve no doubt that Dempster and General Manager Jason Greenberg will have the team well-prepared for the trip and to re-start the national team’s rise after a disappointing 2010 campaign.

The final paragraph in the Great Britain story also raises the possibility that the games might be streamed live on the internet.  Tel Aviv’s time zone is two hours ahead of British Summer Time so we could be able to follow the games at a convenient hour.

As They See ‘Em by Bruce Weber

As They See ‘Em: A fan’s travels in the land of umpires by Bruce Weber (Scribner, 2009) 356 pages

AsTheySeeEmUmpires in baseball, much like officials in all sports, are often considered to be nothing more than a necessary evil.

They proudly claim that you cannot have a proper game without them in the hope that this will make people realise their importance, but it has the opposite effect.  It reinforces the point that you have to have them, not that it’s beneficial, let alone desirable.  Umpires are there for fans to jeer every time they make a decision against their team, to receive little to no praise for the 99 calls they get right and merciless criticism for the 1 they get wrong.Â

Part of the umpire’s unenviable plight reflects the fact that most fans, media pundits, players and managers don’t really understand what they do, what they’ve had to go through to reach the elite level and what life is like for them once they are there.Â

The umpiring fraternity in MLB fuels this by shunning outsiders, not surprisingly considering the grief they get, but Bruce Weber was able to win their trust and in doing so has written a fascinating book that gives baseball fans a greater insight into the world of umpiring.

The most surprising revelation for me is the seemingly haphazard process of training and promoting umpires in the North American system.Â

There are two main umpiring schools and the MLB Commissioner’s Office has very limited involvement in the process.   While players are subject to constant public scrutiny and progress through the minor league ranks based on performance, there’s a clear element of the “old boys’ network” when it comes to the officials (‘Old boys’ being a particularly apt expression, as the entries about the experiences of the few female umpires make clear.  They make for interesting reading in light of the recent ‘sexism’ debate in football).Â

There are only a small number of MLB positions at any one time and once an umpire has reached the Majors, they are virtually there for life so long as they don’t slip to an obviously poor standard.  The whole process might serve a few veterans well, but it does little for the image of the profession, or for maintaining high standards through competition for places.

The situation adds yet another entry onto the list of ‘reasons why someone would be mad to become an umpire’, but that doesn’t stop many people each year going to a training camp in the hope of “chasing the dream”, such that it is.Â

The dream is, of course, being part of the game at the highest level and As They See ‘Em shows that, as with all sports, it’s a long hard road to achieve that aim.  The minor leagues are an especially brutal proving ground.  Budding umpires drive hundreds of miles to get to games, receive low pay, endure run-down motels and cheap food, all so that they can be bawled at by managers, players and fans alike.  The pay and conditions are much improved once an umpire makes it to the Majors, but the grief only increases, as does the pressure to be out on the field regardless of injury or illness.

Which all begs the question: why does anyone do it?  Weber explores this theme by training to become an umpire himself, meeting many hopefuls on the way who clearly love baseball and, lacking the playing skills, see officiating as the next best option.Â

It is greatly revealing to discover just how much there is to learn, not simply through knowing the laws of the game inside out but how to interpret them, how to communicate with players and managers and how to get yourself into the best possible position on any given play to allow you to see exactly what happens and to make the correct call.

It’s interesting to note from Weber’s experience how years of being a fan and an occasional player give you very little useful grounding for a career in umpiring.  He has to look at the game, every individual play, from a completely different perspective.  Additionally, as Weber puts it, “the instantaneous decision-making that defines an umpire’s responsibility is the sort of challenge that most of us, in our personal and professional lives, shy away from”.

We all know that umpiring is much more difficult than it looks, that the umps don’t have the luxury of different camera angles and countless slow-motion replays to study before making a call on bang-bang play.  But do we really appreciate it as much as we should?

Of course, the umpires are there to do a job.  Those in MLB should be the best, they should be expected to get the decisions correct and to receive criticism if they make notable mistakes.  However, technology now demands them to be perfect and that is an expectation too far.  As one of the most memorable passages in the book explains: “technology has now let fans, in the ballpark and at home, in on what the people on the field already knew: that the umpires’ calls are essentially approximations of actual results”.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the strike zone.  Weber notes humourlessly the shock at standing behind home plate and discovering that the white box that appears on TV broadcasts is not there in real life.  It’s not that simple, and not just because umpire’s don’t have a ‘K-Zone’ in front of their eyes.

 “The strike zone isn’t, nor has it ever been, set in stone, or even sand.  It’s set in the air, a concept, not a thing … the umpire’s job is not so much to enforce the rulebook as to represent it, to set the fulcrum of the seesaw – to be the fulcrum of the seesaw – and make sure the duel between the pitcher and the hitter is properly balanced”.

Again, this comes back to the idea that calls are “approximations” and that the real world implementation of the laws is not always as black and white as people would believe.  Beyond the extremes, laws are always subject to interpretation and their enforcement is governed through experience and a common understanding of proportionality and fairness.

For example, and to keep with the sporting theme, take corner kicks in football.  Holding, tugging a shirt or deliberately blocking a run should result in a foul every time, but only blatant and decisive acts lead to the whistle being blown.  If the law was upheld strictly then the game would become a farce, either with fouls being awarded on every single occasion or goals beings scored from virtually every good delivery due to defenders being unable to stop the attackers.Â

The general intent of the law is fine, so, instead of a rewrite, the law is interpreted in a way that is considered fair and everyone accepts it, albeit withholding the right to complain if a blatant and significant infraction is not spotted.

The strike zone has rarely (never?) been called precisely to the letter of the law and there has never been a time when players have worked to the exact same strike zone in every single game (accepting that the zone differs from batter to batter due to their height etc).  We’ve never had the technology to change that until now and whenever a high-profile missed call is jumped on by the media and fans, the argument of using technology to define balls and strikes is raised again.Â

But is it really something that would make the game better?  Of the thousands of pitches called in any regular season week, very few are inaccurate to the extent that they cause serious dispute.  The Questec system, which evaluates umpires’ pitch-calling, helps to keep the officials within an acceptable degree of tolerance.Â

If there is some slight variation from there, through an umpire having a marginally wider/higher/lower zone or with the zone changing minimally due to the context of the play (e.g. immensely skilled pitchers like Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine slightly widening the strike zone due to their unerring accuracy, as explained by Weber), is that something that should be eliminated?

There’s an argument, beyond the reputational blow of taking the responsibility away from the umpire, that we would actually lose a distinctive human element that has always been part of the game.Â

As They See ‘Em makes you consider the umpire’s craft in this way and many more, which few of us would do otherwise.  This edition of the book includes a new afterword in which Weber makes some observations about the future of umpiring.  In short, he believes the focus shouldn’t be on significantly increasing the use of technology.  Instead, there should be a concerted effort to improve umpiring through better recruitment, better training, better remuneration and a public system whereby the performance of umpires can be properly considered.  It’s a convincing argument.

One benefit of the close inspection from TV cameras and technology in recent years has been the realization that in most cases the umpires do an excellent job. Weber’s close inspection of the profession in As They See ‘Em should have a similarly positive effect.

Have you read “As They See ‘Em”? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.