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Stockholm Baseball Opening Day 2012
Stockholm City Sports Commissioner Regina Kevius throws out the first ball at Opening Day 2012
Defending Swedish champs Stockholm opened the 2012 season with a doubleheader at home against Gefle on May 1. Despite a second innng 2 RBI double by Daniel Wood, back in Stockholm after playing for Norwegian champs Oslo last year, Stockholm lost the opener 5-4.
But Stockholm came back to win game 2, 10-8.
IHT still boycotting baseball
More than a week into the new season, the “International Herald Tribune” doesn’t have a word about baseball in today’s edition. Not even scores or standings.
To add insult to injury, there’s a full column about the NFL, who are totally in the off-season.
Why no baseball in the IHT?
Where is the baseball coverage in the “International Herald Tribune”, which is supposed to be the newspaper for Americans abroad?
We’ve been subscribing to the IHT ever since we arrived in Strasbourg eight months ago. We didn’t subscribe in Sweden because: 1) We subscribed to Swedish newspapers, 2) the IHT was not home delivered there, but arrived a day late in the mail, and 3) I could read it at work (although I usually didn’t).
It’s been a good paper, but I ‘ve noticed there’s been very little coverage of baseball as Spring Training ends and the new season begins.
This is a weird transition, as the last Spring Training games were played yesterday, but the 2012 regular season actually started last week when the A’s and Mariners split two games in Tokyo. The morning after that second game I checked the IHT sports section. Not a word about baseball. It might have been too late for the second game (which I had watched live via MLB.tv about 20 hours previously), but there was plenty of time to report
on the first game of the season. Yet, not only no article, no box score or even standings.
Instead there was major coverage of European soccer and rugby (the one sop to American sports was an article about March Madness basketball).
The IHT has always been the daily for Americans in Europe, ex-pats, tourists, and business travellers. If you care about soccer, you can buy a British newspaper. Even today, with Spring Training just ending, not a word about baseball, but an entire page devoted to soccer, rugby, and a bit about golf.
One hopes when the MLB season resumes now the IHT will remember who it is writing for.
ESPN America to broadcast from Cactus League
Amazingly, ESPN America will actually break its ban on the Cactus League and broadcast one game from Arizona:
MLB spring training continues as teams trim their rosters and sharpen their skills with live action from the Red Sox vs Phillies, Angels vs Giants and Yankees vs Braves.
The Giants home game against the Angels from Scottsdale will be broadcast live on March 27th (kind of the exception that proves the rule). Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they will be able to tap into a national (ESPN) broadcast.
Come on ESPN, there’s baseball west of the Mississippi
In America for a couple of weeks and watching a Mets-Tigers game on ESPN. Two irritating things ruining the experience:
One of the announcers has indicated he was once a Giants pitcher. But they NEVER seem to say on the air who the announcers are, and there is nothing to indicate this on the ESPN website. (Ah, they just flashed a graphic, so now I can’t figure out why Mark Mulder said he played on the same team as Tim Lincecum…he must have meant Tim Hudson.)
They reviewed the AL and NL Easts, and promised to do the other divisions. They did talk about the Tigers and the AL Central, but it’s the bottom of the ninth and they haven’t said a word about the NL Central or anyone’s West. MLB media are just too eastern-oriented!
Media/Tech hopes for the new season
Spring Training has been underway for almost two weeks, filled with promise for the new season, with the prospect of disappointment far off. The same applies, partly, in the media and tech offerings for those of us following the game from outside the US.
ESPN America will soon be broadcasting Spring Training games, but for the second year in a row only from the Grapefruit League in Florida. Repeated e-mails asking why they refuse to carry games from Arizona go unanswered. NASN, which ESPN bought a couple of years ago, carried games from both Florida and Arizona. One wonders why it is so much harder for ESPN to do so? Or is this just another example of the East Coast bias one constantly encounters in American baseball coverage?
Fortunately there is an alternative to ESPN America (which they seem slow in grasping), the many offerings from MLB.tv, including Gameday Audio. The various MLB.tv packages for 2012 have now gone on sale. This year there is a major improvement. Last year, if you bought an MLB.tv package, you could watch and listen to the games on their excellent At Bat iPhone and iPad apps. But you had to actually pay extra for each of the apps, which seemed like a rip-off to many. This year, if you subscribe to MLB.tv, the apps are free. They are supposed to appear today.
But one thing still seems uncertain. If you access Gameday Audio on a computer, not only can you listen to games live, you can listen to any game afterwards on-demand. This feature has not been included in the In Bat apps. This is particularly strange, since you could listen to archived games on a netbook, but not on an iPad. Even if you tried to just access the MLB site with a browser, you couldn’t do anything, because the iPad lacks Flash. Since rival Android tablets and smartphones do run Flash, this restriction makes no sense, and may explain why the apps are suddenly free.
You can watch archived video from games on iPhones and iPads, which can be an alternative. You can stick the phone in your pocket and listen. But this uses up a lot of bandwidth (and many have bandwidth caps) and sometimes the whole thing shuts down if you turn off the screen. And maybe people just want to listen to the radio broadcast.
In the middle of last season I asked Gameday Audio Support if they could consider adding archived games. Their response was along the lines of “that’s a good idea, we’ll think about it for an update”. No such update was forthcoming last season.
In early February I asked the same question again. The response:
The features of the mobile apps for this season are not yet available. They will be released closer to the start of Spring Training games.
We can only hope (although we probably won’t know until the first game of the new season).
Will ESPN America Get Its Act Together?
We’re on the edge of a new baseball season, with the first Spring Training games at the end of the week. Yet Europe’s only cable TV source of baseball seems not to have learned from last year’s mistakes.
Towards the end of last season ESPN America made over its website, probably to make the former NASN.com more like the rest of ESPN. But there were some flaws in the new site, which I wrote to ESPN about at the time. Now with the new season almost here, not much seems to have been done to fix the problems.
I wrote to ESPN again a couple of weeks ago to point out or ask about a couple of things:
- This year would they give us games from Arizona as well as Florida? (NASN did during its tenure, but last year ESPN America only carried games from the Grapefruit League.)
- NASN had printable versions of the schedule for each day. When ESPN did its make-over that feature disappeared, and any attempts to print a day’s schedule just produced the first couple of hours.
It took more than a week, but ESPN America wrote back:
Thank you for your comments and for being an ESPN customer! We monitor feedback very carefully as it helps us offer you the best channel possible. We will take your comments into consideration for future scheduling.
ESPN America is always working to provide a fair and balanced schedule as we try to serve the needs of fans of so many different sports and teams. For the most up-to-date schedule, visit our schedule page at: http://www.espnamerica.com/tv-schedule
This says almost nothing, and with the Spring Training games only a couple of days away, a look at the website reveals they haven’t done much. Once again all of this year’s scheduled Spring Training games for broadcast are from Florida, They are carrying a Tigers-Braves game on March 3, six days after the Grapefruit League opens, the next scheduled broadcast is a Yankees-Red Sox match-up 12 days later on March 15, followed by a Red Sox-Phillies game almost a week after that on March 21.
Why there are so few games is extremely hard to understand. Even harder is the lack of games in Arizona. Perhaps ESPN has failed to notice that both of last year’s World Series teams are in the Cactus League?
On the second question, there is in fact an improvement. If you try to print out a day of the ESPN America schedule, this year the whole day prints. It isn’t formatted for print, and the entire first page is a big black splotch. But it works (although you have to write in what day it is yourself since that information is above the page with the big black splotch.)
They do offer a monthly overview in PDF, but this is less useful for two reasons. One, ESPN America has a tendency to make it available first one or two weeks into the month, and secondly, they often change their schedules as late as the day of broadcast. You can’t trust the PDF.
A few years ago ESPN America’s predecessor NASN was just about the only way to watch baseball in Europe. But that isn’t the case anymore. With a subscription to MLB.TV, not only can you watch every game on a computer (and many on iPhones and iPads) rather than just the handful from ESPN, you can also pipe them into your TV from a PlayStation 3.
So listen ESPN, you don’t have a monopoly any more, there is an alternative. If you keep messing us up, we’ll just go with the alternative and cancel our subscriptions with you.
On-demand Games for iPhone/iPad this Year?
There may be good news for those of us in Europe who want to follow the coming MLB season. It appears that there is a chance we’ll be able to listen and watch games on-demand on our iPhones and iPads.
Last year the At bat 2010 app only offered access to live games, not terribly helpful for those of us 6-9 time zones away from North America. At the same time, subscribers to MLB.TV and Gameday Audio have always been able to access games after they were played, including on netbooks.
Why should a netbook user be favored over an iPad user? I wrote to MLB.com Customer Service about this, and have received the following reply:
Response Via Email(Amanda Jackson) – 02/02/2011 09:28 AM
Dear George:Thank you for your inquiry.
We are working on having archive games available for the iPhone and iPad. We will continue to make it possible for this feature to be available to our customers.
Sincerely,
MLB.com Customer Support
All Star Game Inflation Backlash
Am I the only person who thinks the baseball All Star Game has gotten totally out of hand?
First of all, there’s been a proliferation of events around the real game, the Futures All Star game, the Homerun Derby, and more. Personally I think the Homerun Derby is silly and proves absolutely nothing. But people seem to like it, and it doesn’t get in the way of the real game, since you don’t have to watch it.
What bothers me is all the hoopla before the game actually gets started. Living in Europe I’ve been listening and watching afterwards. On the ESPN Radio broadcast, it starts with a comment that the game will start in an hour. So I fast forwarded an hour, from where it was another half hour before the opening pitch.
Since I fast forwarded I have no idea what they were blabbering about, but it just doesn’ take that long to introduce a game.
TV is just as bad. I think it takes forever for them to inntroducd the players, but those guys have worked hard to get there and deserve the recognition! What bothers me is all the other stuff. Now they have a feature where they introduce people who deserve recognition for their work in the community. These people are great of course, accomplishing way more than me. But why are they occupying a bunch of time before a baseball game?
Between the end of ,presenting the players and the first pitch, it took 25 minutes. And that was in the rebroadcast with minimal commercials!
I just want to see the ballgame, and watch those great players in action. Everything else is just a waste. All Star inflation.
Sweden Winner and Loser in Baseball World Cup
On the field, the Baseball World Cup Group C qualifier could have gone a lot better for Sweden. But the tournament was a great victory for Swedish baseball.
The Swedes lost all three of their games. The closest was the opening 10-8 loss to the Netherlands Antilles.
The 5-1 defeat to South Korea’s was a lot closer than expected considering they are Olympic champions, and ranked number two in the world, compared to Sweden at number 26. But a glance at the roster showed that around half the Korean players were university students. This was obviously not the same team that did so well at the World Baseball Classic.
So it probably wasn’t really a surprise that Antilles beat Korea 9-5. (Although someone mentioned that the best players from the Netherlands Antilles are actually playing for the Dutch national team, so perhaps this was the Dutch team B we saw here.)
The Canadian team (with former Rockies/Cardinals slugger Larry Walker as hitting coach!!!) was made up completely of minor league players, ranging from AAA to the Rookie League. While Sweden probably matched them defensively, the lack of Swedish pitching depth was apparent. There were seven Swedish pitchers in a game called under the mercy rule after the 5th inning, with Canada ahead 19-1.
One of the most emotional moments of the game was when opening game starter Joakim Claesson came in in the fourth inning in the final game, in an attempt to put out the fire and stave off the mercy rule loss. The entire crowd went wild, fully aware that Jocke had pitched well in the first game, and couldn’t have a whole lot left in his arm on one day’s rest. He had pulled it off two weeks previously for Stockholm in the Swedish baseball finals, Jocke winning the first game on the Saturday and coming in as the closer in the final game the next day.
Alas, despite the emotional outpouring things didn’t quite work out the same. Jocke game up a grand slam before closing the door, and Per Sjörs came in to pitch the fifth inning, giving up four hits and one earned run.
So Sweden could have done better on the field. But in terms of organization Sweden was a big winner in the Group C qualifier.
The Nya Örvallen stadium was amazingly transformed, with stands for 3000 instead of perhaps 50 before the upgrade. Where the right field bleachers were during the tournament, there used to be a bench on a small hill overlooking the field.
Most of the new bleachers are temporary, apparently only a handful behind homeplate will remain. But it was amazing seeing the old stadium with so much seating!
And all the concessions were also amazing. The little Sundbyberg Heat kiosk and tiny single toilet were closed, replaced by several restaurants and lots of porta-potties. There were sales of t-shirts, caps, baseball gloves, and even balls signed by all the players on the various national teams. There was even a place with a radar gun so kids could practice pitching and see how fast they were throwing.
It really reminded me of attending a game by the old Sonoma County Crushers, a Santa Rosa team that played in the sadly gone independent AAA Western Baseball League. Same concessions, but a much more powerful feeling, as all of baseball Sweden came together for a three day celebration.
The tournament also gots lots of publicity in the Swedish media. The national dailies “Dagens Nyheter” and “Svenska Dagbladet” not only reported the scores, as they do with Swedish Elite Division games, they ran large articles almost every day. The photo news agency Scanpix sent photographers every day. Even Swedish Radio’s Radiosporten reported the final scores after the end of the tournament. (First time I’ve ever heard them report on anything baseball other than the final game of the World Series.)
So congratulations to the Swedish Baseball and Softball Federation and the tournament organisers.
(And a tip for next year…change the selection process for the national team. The coach actually has to go watch the various teams play before picking his team. There were only four players on the 24 man roster from Sweden’s best team Stockholm. The three Stockholm position players all hit home runs, the only Swedes to do so, and the pitcher was Sweden’s best.)
George Wood
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