A letter to Pacific League TV

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have been a subscriber to PA League TV for the 2016 season and am writing to let you know how pleased I have been with your service.  I hope to renew my subscription for the 2017 season.  Please keep up the good work.

Here are a few changes I would like to suggest.  

Allow controls at full screen.  The present software removes all video controls when the full-screen option is engaged.  This can be frustrating whenever there is need to pause, fast-forward, rewind, or adjust volume.  

Add 10 second forward/reverse buttons.  These would be a huge help in navigating through a game.  

Increase video resolution.  Comparing your service with other sport streaming services, the video resolution is quite low. 

Add condensed games.  MLB VOD service offers games in four formats:  Live Stream, VOD Full Game, VOD Condensed and VOD Highlight.  The highlight film is similar to what you already offer at PA TV.  The condensed film runs 10-15 minutes, depending on the level of action in any particular game.  All of the relevant plays are shown, though not every pitch, nor every out.  There is no commentary on the audio track.  (Search [condensed game] at youtube for examples.)

Add a Facebook share button to video clips.  At present, only a Twitter button is available.  FB is by far a wider network, one which the Pacific League can use to promote its brand through attractive and interesting video clips.  

Hide scores in Archive.  I have sometimes been unable to watch games for a few days and when I go to the archive to find them, I have to make a deliberate effort to cover or avoid looking at scores.  

Thank you for your attention to this letter and thank you again for a wonderful service.  My last wish is that the NPB offer a streaming service for both leagues.

Yours sincerely, 

A letter to NPB

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am an overseas fan of yakyuu who would like to have access to all NPB games, regular and post-season.  At present, I can purchase streaming/VOD rights to games only of the Pacific League.  This means I can watch only half of NPB teams, only half of interleague games, and nothing at all of the Central League Climax Series or the Japan Series.

If you have a look across the internet, you will find the following baseball leagues offer streaming/VOD packages:

• MLB (USA)
• MLB Minor (USA)
• LMP (Mexican Pacific League, winter)
• LMB (Mexican Baseball League, summer)
• CPBL (China Professional Baseball League, Taiwan)
• KBO (Korean Baseball Organization)
• ABL (Australian Baseball League)

Why does a leading country such as Japan still not offer such service to fans worldwide?  If even small leagues on three continents have managed to offer affordable, easy access to _all_ their games, why not the NPB?

For the moment, I rely on fans uploading content to file sharing sites to avail myself of Central League games and the Japan Series.  I would be happy to pay for a quality product, but at the moment there is _none_.  I hope by the 2017 season NPB will resolve what issues remain in order to better serve their customers.

Best regards,

The Marlins Man

Photo:  TAMMY LJUNGBLAD The Kansas City Star

Not your average fan.

"... he has attended over 300 Major League Baseball playoff games— including 89 in the World Series, 200 NBA playoff games and 70 in the Finals, 37 NCAA championship games, and 27 Super Bowls."

More at NJ.com.

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Baseball announcer struggles to find the participle

Sport commentary is largely innocuous fluff, easy to ignore, or completely tune-out.  How many of us can keep a game running on the television while engaged in something else?  Last week during Game Two of the NLDS (between the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers), I happened to be paying a bit more attention and noticed something peculiar. Something grammarians, speech pathologists, and linguistics will find amusing.

Have a listen to the sound file and see if you can spot the error in linguistic processing.

The announcer is discussing an event in which a baseball catcher has to swing his arm approximately 45 degrees to tag a runner approaching from his left.  As the description is happening in review, that is, being discussed as a past event while looking at a video replay, the announcer deploys the third conditional to describe what might have happened if the catcher had performed differently.  His problem is that his mind can’t retrieve the past participle for swing.  He appears to be attempting to deploy the conjugation pattern i-a-u, as found in swim-swam-swum, drink-drank-drunk, sing-sang-sung, ring-rang-rung.  The conjugation for swing is swing-swung-swung (though swang as the past form seems to be used just often enough to be noted in some dictionaries as one now rarely used).  The announcer’s mind catches itself in what it believes to be an error (swinged), but the correction suggested (swang) seems unequally unacceptable.  He recovers by switching verbs.  The completed statement turns out to be a mixed conditional:

If he could have swi – swa - brought that glove around without touching the dirt, I think he’s got a play.

Book Review: Yu, Junwei. Playing In Isolation: A History Of Baseball In Taiwan. 2007.

Yu, Junwei. Playing In Isolation:  A History Of Baseball In Taiwan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Playing In Isolation is an adapted version of a PhD thesis by a Taiwanese scholar, former amateur baseball player, and present professor at the National Taiwan University of Physical Education and Sport.  Much of the book deals with amateur baseball - a professional league debuting on the island only in the 1990s - and more specifically the role of government in sport.  As one of the first book-length texts on the subject in English, readers might expect a somewhat hagiographic account, but there is no cause for concern. Yu is unafraid to examine the negative effects of policy and in his introduction laments the unwanted government attention his research attracted.  For non-specialists, Yu does an adequate job providing the background necessary to follow his largely chronological account. The latter half of the book seems to offer a number of threads that aren’t woven into a larger story, a problem not uncommon for historians working on events contemporaneous to their own lives.  The writing is workmanlike, aimed at a general audience, and could have benefited from a stronger editor.

Review: Antolihao, L. (2012). "From baseball colony to basketball republic: postcolonial transition and the making of a national sport in the Philippines."

Antolihao, L. (2012). "From baseball colony to basketball republic: postcolonial transition and the making of a national sport in the Philippines."  Sport in Society, 15:10, 1396-1412.

The Philippines at the turn of the last century presents an interesting case study in the cultural diffusion of sport.  Occupied for nearly half a century following the Spanish American war, US troops, businessmen, educators and missionaries introduced both baseball and basketball.  One thrived, the other did not.

What might account for this?

Book Review: Fitts, Robert K. Remembering Japanese Baseball. 2005.

Fitts, Robert K. Remembering Japanese Baseball. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

If you don’t know much of the sport as it developed in Japan, Remembering Japanese Baseball is probably not the best place to start learning.  It consists of transcribed interviews with 25 former players in Japan’s professional baseball league, ranging in time from the pre-war era to the late 1990s.  Of the 25 interviews, only five are with Japanese.  The title is a bit misleading, like a book called Remembering American Baseball containing interviews with players from Latin America and Asia.

Since publishing this collection in 2005, Fitts has gone on to write three books on Japanese baseball history:  a biography of the first American to play in Japan, the first Japanese to play in the US, and an account of Babe Ruth’s visit to Japan.  Remembering Japanese Baseball might be considered Fitts’ first notes for those projects, the groundwork that led him to and informed future research and writing.