This is the first of four stories on Major League Baseball and social media. Full disclosure: Major League Baseball Advanced Media employs FanGraphs contributor Paul Swydan, who wrote this series.
The evening of Nov. 11, 2010, turned into a pretty frustrating one for Kyle Scott. On that night, Scott, who runs the popular Philadelphia sports blog Crossing Broad, got an email from YouTube telling him that several baseball videos he’d posted were being removed from the site. While the videos were short — none exceeded 30 seconds — and contained scant game footage, they’d apparently gotten the attention of Major League Baseball Advanced Media. It wasn’t the first time that Scott had run afoul of MLBAM, but he was frustrated enough by the situation to write about it the next day. “They were short clips that we used for a quick laugh,” Scott says now. The Internet site The Big Lead picked up Scott’s story, and Scott says most readers “sympathized with our frustrations.” That MLBAM put the kabosh on Scott’s videos seems counterintuitive for a sport that’s constantly trying to expand its brand — and 15 months after getting the YouTube email, Crossing Broad averages nearly 1 million page views a month.
So is MLB a big-league bully — or is it simply protecting itself? And how does the league stack up against its peers on the American sports landscape? To figure that out, you first have to take a look at Scott’s case — or more specifically, to YouTube, where the league’s social-media firestorm began. Not only did MLB not post their own videos on YouTube, they actively sought to remove videos that fans had posted — a decision that ran counter to other sports leagues, which never took such heavy handed measures. Sometimes, as in Scott’s case, the deletions left a very public trail — and that critical fallout can have a lasting effect. But while MLBAM could have been more diplomatic about its position, the league’s online media arm had a practical business reason for taking such a hard line: the moneymaker called MLB.tv.
During every Yankees game for the past month or so the YES Network hyped the first ever Major League Baseball game broadcasted in HD. It happened last Saturday in Seattle, when the Yankees played the Mariners. The true 3D feed came two innings late thanks to a glitch in the production truck, but after that the experiment, by most accounts, was a success. The 3D era for baseball had officially begun.
On Tuesday night Panasonic, a forerunner in the 3D TV game, held an event at the Helen Mills Theater & Event Space in New York City. My colleagues from River Ave. Blues and I were invited, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get our first 3D baseball experience. After a round of hot dogs and beers, we strapped on our glasses and enjoyed a strikeout-fueled All-Star performance. Watching it in 3D certainly added a different feel to the game.
The goggles
This past winter several 3D movies hit theaters. The movies required special glasses, but unlike the red and blue glasses of 80’s 3D technology, these were more like sun glasses. They were cheap enough that no one really minded if you left the theater with them. None of this is true for the goggles required for 3D TV viewing. The new glasses are quite a deal heavier than the movie 3D glasses because they contain electronics that help render the 3D image. This means that they are more cumbersome. They’re also more expensive, running $150 to $200.
And here they are while on my face.
Ze googles! They do nothing!
The goggles were not comfortable at all, though that shouldn’t come as a shocker. They kept sliding down my nose, and neither one of the two size settings helped. Then again, I do not wear glasses. Both of my colleagues, Mike and Ben, do, and they reported no discomfort. It sounds, then, like they will take some time getting used to at best. I’m still not sure that I’d want to watch games every night while wearing these things.
One aspect I found strange was that the goggles could focus on only one display at a time. We had three TVs in the room, and at first I thought that the other two were too far away and thus the goggles could not render the image. After a few innings I ended up staring at one of the other TVs for a few seconds, and eventually a better view did render. When I turned my attention back to the TV in front of me it took anther few seconds to adjust back. Again, this probably doesn’t have any implications for home viewing.
A side-effect of wearing the goggles is the loss of peripheral vision. The theater had people coming around to collect empty plates and bottles, and I jumped each time someone leaned into view. That, too, will take some time getting used to, though I don’t imagine it being as big an issue in a household setting.
The image
In 3D movies it seems like the images pop off the screen and into the theater. On 3D TV it’s more like they’re playing inside the box — like a diorama. I’m not saying the experience is worse by any degree; I actually did enjoy the presentation. The 3D aspect added a level of depth that an HDTV just can’t capture. Cameras have advanced in technology, and we can in some cases judge depth while watching a 2D image, but in 3D the distinctions become clearer.
One aspect that struck all of us as strange was how only certain aspects popped in 3D. It almost looks like the background — in this case the outfield wall and scenery beyond — was a stage set. The field, too, carried a similar effect. The players did pop off the field, but it seemed like the field and the background were flat surfaces. This is at least partly because we’ve grown so used to 2D broadcasts. watching in 3D still felt like a stage play at times when the background was a prominent part of the picture.
For most of the game I sat at the end of a couch, putting me at a pretty extreme angle facing the TV. For 2D broadcasts this is usually fine. The image is flat, so it looks the same from all angles. At first I thought the same was true for 3D, and I enjoyed the early goings. But then around the third inning I turned my head to a TV that was to the right of me, but gave me a straight-on view. The difference was noticeable. Everything seemed like it was deeper and more defined. If you’re going to enjoy a game in 3D, I suggest you make sure to get a seat front and center.
The presentation
From the first pitch we could tell that not only would the 3D picture be something different, but the entire presentation would, too. When David Price wound up and dealt to Hanley Ramirez we were watching from behind the left-handed batter’s box. Like most other aspects of the 3D experience this seemed odd at first. By the second batter, however, I was loving it. You just see so much more from a behind the plate angle.
The most noticeable difference when viewing from behind home plate, and in 3D, is the level of detail you can see in the pitcher’s delivery. Every little nuance of Ubaldo Jimenez’s elaborate windup was clearly visible, and that added to the viewing experience. Normally only fans sitting up close can see him go through the motions, while the rest of us view from afar, or from our 2D televisions. The 3D view allows all fans to experience the finer details of the game.
It does take a little extra focus to watch the game in 3D, at least initially. It took me a few batters to pick up the ball out of the pitcher’s hand, and then a few innings to pick up the ball off the bat. Again, this has to do with the differences in what we’ve become accustomed to and what 3D brings to the table. I imagine that it would take a few games to settle into the 3D viewing.
Part of the difficulty in picking up the ball came from the camera work. It seemed like the cameras and production crew were slow to pick up the ball, leaving us for a few seconds with little idea of where it went and who was fielding it, which was to be expected. Shooting a game in 3D is going to be different than shooting it normally, and it will take time for cameramen and production crews to figure it out. John Fillipelli, president of programming and production for the YES Network, made this point when talking about his station’s experiment.
Right now we are shooting a 3D game like we do a regular baseball game with the same basic camera positions. We have to find ways as we go along to accentuate the benefits of 3D in shooting baseball. These telecasts will allow us to start finding the best camera angles, determine how many cameras we need, things like that. To learn the nuances of shooting a game in 3D.”
Once the crews figure out what’s required for a 3D broadcast I imagine that they’ll pick up the flow of the game better. Considering I enjoyed the experience as presented on Tuesday night, any improvement in the presentation could make a big difference.
Additional observations
There were a few other aspects of the 3D experience that I noticed while watching the NL win its first All-Star game since I was in eighth grade.
The strike zone was difficult to judge because of the off-center angle — even more so than the off-angle center field cameras. This wasn’t a huge problem, but I’m sure it’s something they’ll look into as the technology develops.
At the outset the production crew used the behind-the-plate view for right-handed batters and the normal center field view for left-handed batters. I thought that was because of the camera sitting behind the left-handed batter’s box. But later in the game they switched to the rear camera exclusively. I was glad; I didn’t go to watch the All-Star game in 3D to see the same broadcast as I could on my own HD.
Repeated for emphasis: if 3D technology in this form is going to spread to homes around America, they’re going to have to do something about the glasses. Watching a special event, even a playoff series, with the glasses would be fine, but I can’t imagine watching 150 some-odd games a year while wearing them.
The bottom line
3D TV will not change the world. It will not make it feel like you’re at the game. But it does provide an interesting experience that allows you to view the game with nuance not available in 2D. I’m not sure how long it will take the technology to spread, but I hope that by the time it does they’ve worked out some of the kinks. They’re mostly minor, so I imagine it’s feasible if 3D takes as much time as HD did to progress into American homes.
Another Edit: Some comments, like this one, have asked about the author of the script. The universally positive feedback for this goes to Justin Swift.
Edit: Commenter CJett pointed out that this script can be readily installed on Google’s Chrome browser as well as FireFox. I’ve edited the post slightly to reflect this addition.
Disclaimer 2: You must be using FireFox or Chrome to enjoy the script described in this post.
Disclaimer 3: I didn’t write the script, so I won’t take credit or blame for it (though it deserves the former).
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get on with business.
Greasemonkey is a FireFox browser extension that allows users to manipulate web pages after loading them. Why is that cool? Because it lets you add a link to FanGraph’s beside each player’s name on Yahoo’s Fantasy Baseball page, like this:
Here’s how to give it a try:
0. If you’re on FireFox, proceed to step 1. If you’re using Chrome, skip ahead to step 2.
1. Install the Greasemonkey plug-in into FireFox. If you don’t have FireFox, I recommend checking it out; it’s a free, high-quality browser. Once you have FireFox, installing Greasemonkey is a one click process, but it does require a browser restart.
2. Install the FanGraphs link script. Before doing so, please be sure to read the userscripts.org disclaimer. If you’re cool with the disclaimer and terms of service, head over to the link script’s page. Click the “install” button and you’re all set. If you’re so inclined, you can check out the script’s source code.
3. Head over to Yahoo Fantasy Baseball, and try clicking the small FanGraphs icon that should now appear beside each player’s name. It should open a link to the player’s FanGraphs page in a new browser tab or window.
4. If you ever want to remove this script from your browser, perform the following steps: on your browsers menu bar, choose Tools > Greasemonkey > Manage User Scripts; highlight Yahoo Fantasy – FanGraphs Link in the list of scripts; and click the uninstall button.
Another disclaimer: I tried this script on two computers, one Windows and one Linux, and it seems to work fine and the source code looks safe to me. But as a rule of thumb, be careful with what you install on your browser. If you aren’t sure if something is safe to install or not, my recommendation is not to install it.
How’s it work?
In a nutshell, after you load a web page in your browser, you have a full html document loaded on your computer for the browser to display. Greasemonkey uses this premise to provide a means to customize the html in your browser. The script that we just installed works because of Yahoo’s good html design. Each player’s name is placed in a container called a <div> which is further defined as “name” (<div class=”name”>). So the script looks for the player names identified in the html, grabs the name from inside the <div> container, generates a link to FanGraphs, and appends it to the original <div> container.
Today, I’m going to take a look at Yahoo’s Fantasy Sports API. If any of the details are unclear, just leave a comment and we’ll clear ’em up.
The Fantasy Sports API, announced on June 2, 2010, appears to be the only published and freely available API of its kind on the web. Currently baseball and football are included in the API, with basketball and hockey coming later in the year. From here we’ll take it FAQ-style.
What is an API?
In a general sense, an API (Application Programming Interface) is a piece of software that exposes functionality for other software to leverage or integrate. More specific to the web realm, APIs allow sites and applications to retrieve and post data from external services. APIs are the glue that holds Web 2.0 together: mashup sites that incorporate a live Twitter feed or Google Map, buttons that let you “like” a blog post on Facebook, and similar things are all taking advantage of APIs.
So what does the Yahoo Fantasy Sports API do then? In a nutshell, this API fulfills requests for information with structured data responses. So, if your app wants to know what Barry Zito did in a specific game, or the draft results of a fantasy team, it makes a call out to Yahoo’s API, and gets the requested data back in either an xml or json response. The data in either response format is the same and structured the same way, but have different uses. Xml is a markup language and superset of html, while json is an object notation designed for use with Javascript, but that can be decoded by any popular programming language. The Fantasy Sports API is primarily a read-only tool at this point, but there is an API call post transactions to a team as well.
What data is available? I’ll admit I haven’t fully sunk my teeth into this yet, but from reading the documentation, it’s mostly metadata associated with running fantasy leagues: draft results, team rosters, ownership status, etc. Individual player stats are available, but which ones specifically isn’t included in the documentation.
Can I set it in action? Given that the API was only released less than a month ago, there don’t seem to be many live examples yet. The only one I’ve found of a site or app using the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball API is the Pickemfirst app, which I haven’t tried since I am not participating in any fantasy leagues this year. On top of that, usage of this API is limited to non-commercial tools and applications, which may act as a deterrent to potential developers. The hobbyist community is capable of producing great things, though, so it’ll be interesting to see what emerges from the release of this API.
