14 April 2008

Mexican TV

If this isnt speaking truth to power, albeit in April, what is? Despite playing the best baseball in the majors ( by a wide margin), spectacular April weather, fireworks extravaganzas, 10th anniversary celebrations, T-shirt giveaways - and the trumpeted rush of new season ticket subscribers - The Diamondbacks currently rank 11th (of 16) in National League attendance.

Ouch.

Good news from Sunday's 13-5 drubbing was the the post surgery appearance of Doug Davis in the home dugout, a heartening but not particularly surprising development, given the nature of the surgery and 97% remission rate, possibly higher for early detections like Doug's. That, and another strong game for Jeff Salazar, filling in for Chris Short Young.

A day earlier, Young recited the lineup card on Saturday's national FOX game, and offered these gems:

  • He (Young) is the best looking player on the team.

  • Conor Jackson, the son of an actor, answers to Johnny Bravo - or at least that's what the team calls him.

  • Steven Drew's clubhouse handle is Deerslayer, evoking a young Clint Barmes
Eric Byrnes is growing the league's most horrible mustache
  • Finally, Young revealed that catcher Chris Snyder is naked far too often behind closed doors


Thanks to Tracy's heads up, I'll be logging into MLB.tv for the very first time tonight. The game's not on my old supersized "TV", due to FSN's prior commitment to the Phoenix Suns. So Derrick's streaming the game for free. I'll let you know how I like it.

Randy Johnson makes his first start since since June.

Update: I tried MLB.tv for an inning but it didnt provide what I wanted, so I turned it off. I wanted to simulcast the telecast with my home radio (something I can easily do with my "outdated" television) but the MLB.tv telecast is on an unusually long delay (twenty or thirty seconds), making any such sync impossible. There's also, remarkably, no local English language broadcast of the game, due to contention with the Phoenix Suns. So I listened to a Spanish radiocast without the delay annoyance of MLB.tv's taco sized video screen.

I'm a person who enjoys, among other things, watching baseball - not an automaton-slave to the breathless offerings and false come ons of MLB Incorporated. I'm happy watching the Suns game, or Antiques Roadshow. Hey MLB, wake me up if you're on real TV again.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hands down, the Suns game was much better. And it was in HD. :-)

Anonymous said...

MLBtv does have it's drawbacks (as I believe Russell mentioned before, he thought the Mosaic was sponsored by a company called "buffering"), but I have to say that for a baseball fan whose team is far away, it is totally worth every penny. Living in Chicago, I can't watch the Cardinals play. MLBtv offers every Cardinal game (unless they play in Chicago, in which case I'm at the game or I could watch it on TV). I also get to see every single other game (outside of Chicago market and nationally televised games on ESPN, Fox, etc) going on in MLB. When I can't sleep at night, I watch the West Coast games. At work, a game is always on in the background. With MLBtv you also get up to four radio feeds per game, which includes Spanish language. MLBAM has many setbacks, yes, but MLBtv is a gem IMO. The only alternative I have is a DirectTV package that costs twice as much without broadcasting every single game of the season.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Jeff on this. Mosaic is not very good, but MLB tv (when I was living in the UK especially) is a Godsend.Even now it means I can watch every game (except Blue Jays and that' on TV)live.
Hurrah for MLBAM!

Anonymous said...

First, this is my "world" (Welcome!), and I reserve the right to delete remarks hostile to (or in any way inconsistent with) my precambrian musings.

Second, Tracy - that's a lovely blouse.

Third, how will either of you guys ever find a nice girl and settle down, married as you are to this come hither software?

Anonymous said...

You know me better than you think, Matt ;-)

Thus is the life of a bachelor. The only window of time to find a mate (or 'date' as people say) is the two months between the end of the Super Bowl and Opening day. I think it's pretty clear how well that's working out for me.

Russell said...

I have found many nice girls on the internet.

Anonymous said...

The InDemand thing is a good deal though. $159 bucks for the season and most of the games? It's a pittance for seven months of games. And I'm engaged, so this other ancillary stuff doesn't apply to me.