One fine day I got a notion that reviewing baseball video games – in an effort to find the best ones of all time – might be a cool idea. After showing one to Mr. Cistulli, he agreed relented. Thus today I bring you another video game review, this time a more timely review, of MLB ‘12: The Show, which was released Tuesday — or midnight Monday if you were lucky like I was.
Well, it’s not that I don’t want this watch because I don’t like the watch itself. I’m just saying, I have a ‘dope interchangeable’ Modify Watch of my own, and I like it better:
Say what you want about the pitcher and his persona, but his man-merkin can adorn my wrist any day. And when I want to go orange, I can. Somedays I feel whiter than usual. Because the timepiece comes with many different looks, I’m good.
Something about the waterproof wristband and the sleek, iconic face works for me.
Perhaps you’d like one with pinstripes?
To win this watch (and two alternate bands), you must satisfy only two rules:
1) You must mention Derek Jeter.
2) You must amuse me.
Now, considering that I am not necessarily a fan of the Yankees, you’d be right to focus on the second requirement. But, oh, don’t forget the first. And denigrate the subject too much and I might find you undeserving.
Walk that tightrope! Walk it!
Gerald Laird not included.
I was surprised to find, this afternoon, that the $119.99 I’d been saving for really expensive drinks tonight at a really exclusive club had been removed from my PayPal account, courtesy MLB Advanced Media. This maneuver is one that (a) I find slightly irksome and (b) is probably, at some level, technically my fault, owing to how there’s undoubtedly a box I’ve left checked somewhere in my account that gives MLBAM the right not only to withdraw funds from my PayPal account, but also to perform all manner of experimental medical procedures on my person.
Some cursory research on the product having been conducted, here are some other statements about this year’s iteration of MLB.TV that are probably not not true:
• MLB.TV Premium is listed at $124.99 per annum (with the basic MLB.TV package costing $109.99).
• This year, a subscription to MLB.TV Premium includes the At Bat app for iPhone. (Said app cost $14.99 last year.) This ensures that you can watch baseball even as your — or somebody else’s, if you’re into that — wife lay sleeping beside you.
• The spring training schedule for MLB.TV — which starts March 3rd and is available here — seems considerably more robust this season. In fact, I don’t know that there were any spring training games available via MLB.TV last year.
• A subscription to MLB.TV is required to view games on connected devices (i.e. PS3, Xbox 360, Roku, etc.).
• There actually is some (literally) fine print regarding the autorenewal process, to this effect: “Your yearly subscription to MLB.TV or MLB.TV Premium will automatically renew annually on or about March 1 each year at the prior year’s regular full yearly price.”
Welcome to you, too, CBS Sports ULive.
The college baseball season began this past weekend and, owing to a conspicuous absence of the professional game available for public consumption, I resolved that finding a collegiate game between two talented programs would serve as a serviceable antidote.
After reading Baseball American Aaron Fitt’s preview of the weekend’s games, I settled upon the series between No. 10 Vanderbilt and No. 2 Stanford as the one I’d most like to watch.
As one might expect, the viewing options were quite limited. The series was not broadcast by ESPN, or even ESPN3 (which appears not to carry any sort of collegiate baseball until a pair of games on March 2nd).
I could, however, access an online feed through the sites of both the Stanford and the Vanderbilt baseball programs.
In both cases, I was redirected to the Stanford Videos page — which appears, in this case at least, to serve as a sort of Stanford-themed “skin” for CBS Sports ULive, what I gather to be the streaming arm of the CBS Sports College Network.
I got a late start on everything, I think. I didn’t kiss a girl till I was 20; by the time I actually listened to an entire Pavement album, they’d broken up; I’d never heard of Bill James until I read Moneyball in the autumn of 2003; and I’d managed to make it through an entire Bachelor’s program in English (concentration in poetry) without even hearing of poets like Charles Olson or Alice Notley. I was introduced to these poets and myriad others only after taking a job at Woodland Pattern Book Center, probably the greatest poetry bookstore in the United States. It was at WPBC that I finally found Tom Clark’s Baseball — over 30 years after it was published.
I’ll cut to the quick: Baseball is a – perhaps the – must-read book for those who appreciate the NotGraphs approach to fanaticism.
Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse is popular among the country’s literati.
When it became clear that a certain hard-hearted colleague was unwilling to host my wife and me on the eve of our Thanksgiving-morning flight from O’Hare to Boston, necessity dictated that we find lodging in the vicinity of the airport. And when it became clear that the Holiday Inn and Suites in nearby Rosemont, Illinois, offered not only reasonable rates but counted among its amenities Harry Caray’s World Famous Italian Steakhouse, good sense dictated that we make a reservation there (i.e. the Holiday Inn and Suites) post-haste.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an earth television series, premiered in 1993. It is set beginning in 2369 on a space station run by the United Federation of Planets. The space station is located near a wormhole, which invites a variety of trade, politics, and eventually war. The commanding officer of this particular space station is Benjamin Sisko. Ben, born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2332, is the tragically widowed father of Jake Sisko (in short: Ben’s wife Jennifer was killed in the battle between the Borg and the Federation following the Borg’s assimilation of Captain Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation) in order to gain tactical information). And, in the great Trek tradition of humanizing its humans with one or two quirks that the viewer can relate to, Benjamin Sisko loves baseball.
I wish he’d look at me the way he looks at that baseball, knowwhatI’msayin?
On 24th century earth, baseball is largely forgotten, but kept alive by a handful of enthusiasts, of which our Ben is one. In the early DS9 episode “If Wishes Were Horses,” an alien impersonating Buck Bukai gives Sisko a baseball. That baseball becomes one of Ben’s prized possessions, taking on a symbolic importance throughout the show. It stays on Ben’s desk throughout his sometimes long disappearances during wartime, and disappears when he intends to leave forever. When he is around, it sits prominently at his desk (when he’s not tossing it in his hand while contemplating important decisions). Who is Buck Bukai, you ask? Ben Sisko’s favorite baseball player: Harmon Buck Gin Bukai, known as Buck or “Buckaroo.” Bukai’s rookie year in the Major Leagues was 2015. He played for the London Kings for four years before joining the Crenshaw Monarchs of the Planetary Baseball League (PBL). He also played for the Gotham City Bats and two other teams before rejoining the London Kings, this time of the PBL. Buckaroo was a fairly extraordinary player: a switch hitting shortstop who broke DiMaggio’s hit streak record in 2026 (with the Kings). Bokai’s career spanned over 25 years until he retired in 2042 after the Kings won one last World Series against the New York Yankees, the final game of which was attended by only 300 people. According to one Star Trek novel, this was the last World Series ever played on earth and Bokai hit the game winning run home run in the 11th inning of Game 7. I’m guessing he’d be your favorite player too, if you were Ben Sisko (and aren’t we all?).
The classic Star Trek attention to detail!
In episdoe 154 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, titled “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” Vulcan Captain Solok challenges Ben to a good old fashioned Holosuite baseball game. For those totally uninitiated in the ST universe, a Holosuite/deck is essentially a place where a computer simulates whatever type of reality you ask it to. Examples of this on Next Generation include a Sherlock Holmes episode and the hilariously titled western adventure “A Fistful of Datas.” Holosodes (I just made that up) of Star Trek series often represent a break from the outside world and a fairly contemplative and philosophical take on memories and dreams. At least in TNG and DS9, these episodes are almost always referential to some time on earth much closer to our present than the show and that’s what makes them fun and also totally ridiculous. Despite the cheeky costumes always featured in holodeck episodes, they often examine deep issues such as “what makes something alive?” (when a hologram develops consciousness). But this particular holosode doesn’t try to cast a new light on religion or race, humanity or logic. It is, like the baseball game is for the crew of the space station, simply a break. I guess that’s just how baseball is for people unlike myself who don’t use it as a tool to examine every other aspect of the universe.
Michael Franks’s “Baseball,” from his album “One Bad Habit” (1980, Warner Brothers).
Today, we answer some important questions: Is baseball really that much like love? Did the Pittsburgh Pirates look awesome in 1970? How can I keep control of my nerves with the way you wind up when you throw me those curves?
This man is after our women.
I don’t have facts to back this up, but my unfailing intuition* tells me that, if there’s one problem with marriage in 2011, it’s that we ask too much of it.
*Or “mostly unfailing,” I should say. One time my intuition told me to go all-in on Crystal Pepsi. Turns out that was a “bad” “idea.”
Where our grandparents — survivors of war, Depression, and uninspired TV programming — were happy merely to find a spouse with most of the limbs in most of the right places, the husband and wife* of the modern era are now expected not only to tolerate each others’ stupid faces for 50-plus years, but also be best friends, accomplished lovers, and, in most cases, caring parents.
Deion Sanders, trying to bring fashion to bloggers at the Van Heusen Institute of Style #BWB4 Kickoff Party also presented by Captain Morgan & Guinness Black Lager.
What is a blog? What is a blogger?
At BlogsWithBalls 4.0, hosted this past weekend by Bloomberg Sports in their fabulous digs, those questions seemed prevalent. Though never specifically addressed, the struggle to define the blog and its writer simmered below the surface. Questions of access, funding, and innovation were all debated openly in the mostly excellent panels and yet it often felt like an element was missing.
