Some cursory Google-ing reveals no specific announcement on the matter from MLB itself, but, as David Pinto discovered ca. 48 hours ago (and the media on the present electronic page illustrates) video embedding is now available through MLB.com.

Here’s what the page for the above video looks like, for example:

As Pinto suggests — and which even more cursory investigation reveals — there doesn’t appear to be an embed option for the most recent videos. While that makes the discovery less than 100% satisfying, this certainly marks a step in the best direction for MLB.

How the author feels on the inside.

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.

With a carnival barker’s enthusiasm, I should like to announce: R.A. Dickey names his bats after famous swords! Regard:

One bat is called Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and the other is Hrunting. Dickey, an avid reader, said that Orcrist came from “The Hobbit.” Hrunting — the H is silent, Dickey said — came from the epic poem “Beowulf”; it is the sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel’s mother.

First and foremost, R.A. Dickey is a Great Man of History because he’s a bearded knuckleballer. But the 11-year-old boy in me — the one who would drift into sleep with the Monster Manual splayed across his breast and dream dreams of a gelatinous cube’s hit points — now holds him in a newer, loftier esteem.

Baseball and swords! What could possibly be next? Hot, delicious pizza, mayhaps?

America loves R.A. Dickey. I declare it to be so, and the rest of America is not free to disavow this love we have for R.A. Dickey.

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I’ve been ambling through some early 20th-century newspaper archives. The best part of all this has been disinterring the sports prose of one W.J. Slattery of the long-dead San Francisco Call.

Suffice it to say, if a man like Mr. Slattery still brandished his quill (which, I imagine, he did in much the same way that decorated cocksman Aaron Rowand brandishes his bat) then the print dailies of the world would not be in such a state of crisis.

Why do I say this? Please dig his lede from April 8, 1907, in which he mourns a San Francisco Seals loss to the Portland Beavers:

The Seals had enough of the left-over victorious spirit to put it on the Beavers when the teams made their bow to the Oakland fans yesterday morning, but the afternoon mixup before a house that was overflowing was a delusion, a snare, an imposition and a joke to the admirers of the native talent who were rooting for San Franciso. Never was the score a tie.

This “snare” was particularly surprising if you’d seen the mighty Seals go through their warm-up liturgies:

The Seals rushed on to the field with seemingly an overstock of real pepper when the bell rang. They whisked the ball around in practice like a flock of two-time pennant winners. There was confidence in the demeanor of each man; In fact, the entire team made the play so strong that the majority of the spectators conceded them the game before the first ball had been pitched.

And of the villain of this story, the poised Portland hurler by the name of Mr. Groom who vanquished the Seals despite the triumphalist vigor of their infield practice, Slattery writes:

It was his curves that kept the Seals off the bases in virtually every Inning, though the willing fans did the best they could to ruffle the youngster by saying things that only a baseball rooter can say when he feels like talking.

Indeed, the things a baseball rooter will say when he feels like talking.

Yours truly is a baseball rooter, and he happens to feel like talking: Mr. Slattery, we need your like and ilk among us today.

No doubt, you’ve thumbed through Da Vinci’s notebooks and seen crude sketches of this:

That’s the Bottom’s Up beer dispenser, and, much like felt renderings of poker-playing dogs and season one of “Temptation Island,” it’s another of Da Vinci’s dreams for civilization that has been triumphantly realized. This innovation, obviously, will help beer vendors move product, and, much more importantly, it will also bring domestic swill to parched American lips that much faster. So it comes with little surprise that the Red Sox are early adopters of Jesus’s favorite thing ever.

As any good binge drinker knows, it’s the destination, not the journey, and the Bottom’s Up will help get you there faster than something that’s extraordinarily fast plus a tailwind. Until next summer’s release of the Bud Light Lime IV Bag, this will have to do.

GQ (née Gentleman’s Quarterly) has continued that Great American Journalistic Tradition of telling us what we already know.

In this case, there is neither harm nor foul, however, as the Thing We Already Know is that supporters of the Philadelphia Phillies are vile miscreants, as said fans have been named Worst by the aformentioned publication.

Tell me more, Adam Winer!

Over the years, Philadelphia fans have booed Santa Claus, their own star players, and most absurdly, the recipient of America’s very first hand transplant, whose crime was dribbling in a ceremonial first pitch—thrown with his freshly transplanted hand. Boooo! Admittedly, there are some things fans have cheered. Like Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury and a fan being tased on the outfield grass. Things reached their nadir last season, when Citizens Bank Park played host to arguably the most heinous incident in the history of sports: A drunken fan intentionally vomited on an 11-year-old girl.

Some nominal research suggests that, so far as nadirs go, intentionally vomiting on a child is one of the nadir-est.

H/T: Mets Blog

Because you, reader, are a bespectacled person with his finger on the pulse of medias social and otherwise, you might very well be aware that the proprietors of eight fake Twitter accounts (listed below in full splendor) recently descended upon a virtual draft room to pick and choose entirely not-real baseball teams.

Riddles, mysteries, enigmas: you get the idea.

In any case, We the People — thanks to the internet — have been granted the ability to follow this very important fantasy league as the season unfolds via this webpage.

Here are your owners of this fakest of fake leagues: Old Hoss Radbourn, Fake Dayton Moore, Fan Since ’09, Fake Cito Gaston, Fake Fred Wilpon, Dodgers GM, Very Fake Bleacher Report, Faux Frank Wren.

And here’s some crack analysis of the draft, courtesy of Faux Frank Wren himself.

There have been many attempts in the past to understand the method behind Dayton Moore’s madness* – including undercover ninja raids of the Royals front office, and speculations that he was engaged in a duel to the death with Omar Minaya  – but to this day no one has yet succeeded. His so called “Process” remains as mysterious today as the first day he told fans to trust in it, making it the great unsolved mystery of our time. Amelia Earhart’s got nothing on Moore.

And yet….we’ve finally found it. Unearthed by the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, we’ve discovered the Holy Grail:

A Jump to Conclusions mat – of course! I can just imagine Moore now, standing in the middle of his office and asking aloud, “Should I trade Grienke or not?” He closes his eyes, says a quick prayer for good luck, and jumps into the unknown. “Got an offer? Take it.” As Moore moves to the phone to call the Brewers back, he inadvertently steps on the mat one more time. With the receiver in his hand, he looks down at his feet only to see the words, “Why Not Yuni?”

*Is it just me, or does it feel passé to make fun of Moore these days? It was all the rage last year, but the level of snark has lessened recently and I feel behind the times in writing this post. But if we can’t make fun of Moore, what General Manager can we make fun of? Now that Minaya is gone, is there anyone else out there near his level of craziness?

You can click on that image if you want, but basically what I’m telling you is “KaBOOM.”

Maybe it’s because Jonah Keri has recently joined FanGraphs, and Mr. Keri has a well-documented relationship with our canine friends, but, if the algorithm used by our advertisers is at all indicative of our readership, then there’s only one possible conclusion to draw from the image above — namely, that dogs are super into FanGraphs.

If that screenshot is too subtle for you, allow me to draw your attention to the relevant portion of the page. Here:

“That doesn’t prove anything,” you’re probably saying. “That ad is probably just intended for dog owners.”

Right. Of course. That was my initial reaction, too — until I noted that the ad in question appears just below a banner reading “Yard Barker.” At that point I found it difficult to look past all the obvious signs.

In any case, allow this post to serve as recognition of all our dog readers. You guys are going yeoman’s work out there. Keep bringing it.