Wait until next year

Putting off what could be done tomorrow, today

Category: baseball

September 19, 2009

Sports stuff I’ve enjoyed this week

This week I put an inadvertent curse on two sides by making them my surrogate baseball teams and looked at twitter, telly and the future of watching sport, which were fun to write for me, if not fun for you dear reader. By enough about me, what did I enjoy looking at this week?

What have you enjoyed this week?

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September 18, 2009

Watching sport on television – no longer a passive activity?

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I recently read an article in the International Herald Tribune about how sports coverage on television in the States is evolving. Cable companies have started to integrate twitter feeds into their service, so viewers can not only watch the feed while they watch a game, but also tweet themselves through their remote control.

mlb.tv, meanwhile, has integrated twitter into its media player, so you can tweet (with hash tags handily added for the game in question) and read the feed as the game progresses. I’ve tried this myself and it really is a fun addition. I imagine it works well with sports like baseball and (American) football as there are so many intervals in play. As the match is made of a series of discrete moments there are plenty of opportunities to tweet, and read other people’s tweets. Would this work so well in a faster-paced sport like basketball, ice hockey or football? I’m not sure.

As the article suggests, this sort of interaction makes watching sport at home a lot more like watching sport in a bar or with friends. Rather than just letting the game wash over you, you can state your opinion and find out what other people think, in real time from the comfort of your very own comfy chair.

‘Interactivity’ isn’t necessarily new in sporting coverage on television. Here in England, the BBC has experimented with ‘red button’ technology, where the viewer can choose which match to watch at Wimbledon, or which audio stream to listen to when watching the football – the TV commentary, radio commentary, or no commentary at all. Sky has offered similar options, plus offering a number of camera options for games. But did anyone ever watch the player cam, focusing on one man all game?

What’s interesting about the twitter developments are that the ‘interactivity’ is all about creating dialogues, between viewers and also between the viewer and the television company. Previous technology has concentrated on providing a series of viewing options. The experience remained a passive one. Now the viewer isn’t restricted to shouting impotently at the TV. Now s/he can share those views. And have them saved for posterity on his/her twitter feed.

Will this revolutionise television? Probably not in the short-term. There will always be plenty of people who aren’t interested in articulating their views, and certainly not interested in reading the views of others. There is also the quality control issue. If the feed is full of drivel, it won’t catch on.

However, if it can be built upon and refined, interactive sporting coverage on television could work. It certainly seems the best ‘genre’ for it. It’s on regularly, has a dedicated and opinionated audience, and its integral unpredictability should, most of the time, bring up plenty to comment on. A twitter feed alone may not be the answer, but something more sophisticated might be just around the corner, that will put a stop to television being a purely passive pastime for the majority of viewers.

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September 15, 2009

How I picked a surrogate team when mine got eliminated (or confessions of a Mets fan)

metsfan

My name is Steve. And I’m a Mets fan.

I feel this confessional tone is kind of appropriate. A while back I told an American friend that I followed the Mets, to which she shot me a look of pity and said, “Once you’re a Mets fan, you’re always a Mets fan.” She gave the impression that supporting the New York Mets is a little like herpes. It’s a little embarrassing, a little unpleasant, and never really goes away.

This week, after a horrible, injury-ravaged season, the Mets were finally put out of their misery. They cannot now qualify for the post-season play-offs and a shot at the World Series. It’s just no longer mathematically possible. In the wild card standings there is even a nice little E for eliminated next to their name, just to confirm this.

Now, I’m not for one second suggesting that I’m forsaking the Mets. I wouldn’t, even if I could. However, I would like to follow the play-offs in more than a purely neutral way. Sport is just more fun that way.

I could quite easily do this by identifying who I don’t want to win and supporting whoever they are playing against. That might work on a game-by-game basis, but isn’t that satisfying.

So, I’m going to narrow things down and work out who (in the absence of the Mets) I’d personally like to win the World Series.

Immediately, I can throw out the traditional rivals of the Mets. Goodbye Yankees, Cardinals, Phillies and Marlins. The Dodgers and Giants can be thrown out too, for abandoning New York in the fifties. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim is such an unwieldy name that I don’t want to follow them (sorry, this isn’t going to be an article full of rational criteria). Boston are too much of a big side, it wouldn’t feel right at all rooting for them.

By my reckoning that leaves the Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers and Colorado Rockies.  Here I suppose I’d better get more positive with my selection process.

I’ve been to Texas. I have a Texas Rangers baseball cap. They are, perhaps, my American League team, when I think about it. If a Mets game isn’t on, I’ll watch Texas. OK. Easy.

Or is it? Texas are by no means a certainty for the play-offs. Maybe I’m hedging my bets, but I want some cover in case Texas don’t make it. They can be my American League surrogate team, sure. But Colorado are my National League surrogate team. I put a sneaky small stakes bet on them to win the World Series a couple of months ago at 100-1. It is certainly in my financial interests for Colorado to win. Sorry Detroit, you miss out.

There you have it. The Rangers and Rockies are who I’m rooting for. Until next year, then I’m returning to wishing and hoping on the Mets.

Have I been a horrible mercenary with this exercise? Should I just remain neutral in a Mets-free post-season? How do you act when your team falls out of the reckoning – in baseball, or any other sport for that matter?

Photo by Michael Mase. That’s not me in the picture, by the way. I just thought it was an apt image.

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September 12, 2009

Sports stuff I’ve enjoyed this week

I’m still searching for a catchy title for a weekly roundup of sports content I’ve enjoyed on the web and elsewhere, so any suggestions would be more than welcome. I probably haven’t read as much as normal this week, but have still come across some interesting stuff.

I’d love to be pointed in the direction of more interesting blogs, on any sport – it’s wonderful to discover writing out there with a little imagination and thought put into it. That’s something I could work on here!

So, onwards with my lazy blog post of the week full of links and lacking in content…

In baseball, The Hardball Times takes a look at the New York Mets top prospects. Coming off such an injury plagued season it’s good to read about the talent that might break through. As someone with little or no knowledge of what goes on in the minor leagues, I need all the assistance I can get…

In football, a new discovery, Oh you beauty, provides a stats analysis of Liverpool’s failures at set pieces to fuel the zonal vs man-for-man marking debate. It’s refreshing to read some statistical thought in relation to football. While it has its limitations, obviously, it makes a nice change from the purely opinion-based articles that flood the web. Looking forward to more from this blog.

As a Liverpool fan, who has also watched more than my fair share of non-league football over the years, High hopes for AFC Liverpool from twohundredpercent could have been written purely with me in mind.

And finally Pitch Invasion looks at George Gillett talking nonsense in Liverpool Stronger than Ever! Parsing George Gillett.

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September 5, 2009

This week’s sporting pages I’ve enjoyed reading…

I’m not sure if this will be a regular feature or not (and if so, any suggestions for a catchier title are more than welcome!), but here are a few links to sports-related stuff I’ve enjoyed reading this week…

Baseball

The Mets injury crisis has been well covered with Weekly Hit Ground Ball: If the Mets didn’t have bad luck … (Baseball GB) and a rather nifty graphic of how often each Met was hurt via A picture of disarray (The Hardball Times).

A look back at past technology with Clocking Pitch Speed in 1917 (Wezen Ball).

Flip Flop Fly Ball has updated with some more fun baseball infographics. Well worth a look.

I also finished reading Roger Kahn’s The Head Game. He really is a great writer, genuinely warm and interesting, and this was a fascinating look at the history of baseball through the perspective of the pitcher. Christy Mathewson was quite the player, wasn’t he?

Football

Twohundredpercent has just had a refit, and always is full of good content, covering every level of football.

So, what have you enjoyed looking at this week?

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