baseball

Supreme Court rejects fantasy baseball dispute

Major League Baseball has struck out in its attempt to get the U.S. Supreme Court to intercede in a fantasy baseball dispute.

The justices on Monday said they won't take up MLB's challenge, backed by the National Football League Players Association, of prior court rulings favoring a fantasy league company. The announcement came without comment in a standard list of case statuses published by the high court (PDF).

MLB's Internet media arm, later joined by the pro-baseball players' union, had claimed that C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing--a Missouri company that sells fantasy sports products via … Read more

When the brain and baseball cap are one

It may look like one of those iPod hats or something worse, but this baseball cap is more sophisticated--in its technology, if not fashion sense.

The cap is designed to analyze the brain's electroencephalogram (EEG) waves, determining whether you're too fatigued to drive safely. It is just one use for a device developed by researchers at various Taiwan universities and the University of California at San Diego, who hope to expand the technology for applications in myrid other facets of everyday life.

There are other devices with similarly ambitious goals, but many of them require direct contact with the scalp, … Read more

Yahoo to juice up MLB.com ads, distribute baseball video

Yahoo announced Thursday that it has teamed up with MLB.com, the digital arm of professional baseball's operations, in a partnership that encompasses both video distribution and ad sales.

Considering the turmoil over at Yahoo, the three-year agreement could be either a home run or a strikeout.

On the video side, content from Major League Baseball's MLB.tv will be syndicated on Yahoo Sports through the 2010 season. This means that if you're a Yahoo user, you'll be able to watch live and on-demand baseball games on Yahoo Sports--provided that they're not in your home … Read more

The physics of baseball

SAN FRANCISCO--If you were at the Exploratorium here the other day, you might well have needed to be wary of flying objects.

That's because, way in the back of the world-class science exploration museum, senior scientist Paul Doherty was giving a primer on why the curveball--one of the most important pitches in baseball--curves.

Of course, being a hands-on kind of scientist, one who had kindly taken time out of his day to explain the physics of baseball, the only way Doherty could explain the science was to demonstrate it. So he was flinging balls everywhere, and boy were they … Read more

All your baseball are belong to Rick Astley

The title of this post was inspired by Deadspin commenter BlastItBiggs.

After April Fool's Day, it got horribly gauche to practice the art of "Rickrolling"--tricking people into watching the video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," or surprising someone by playing the corny pop song. The goofy Internet fad was so utterly overblown on 4/1/08 that the Web seemed to collectively agree that nobody should ever subject anybody to it again.

The New York Mets, however might have to deal with it for a little while longer.

Innocently enough, … Read more

Wii virtual console releases for this week

Two classic NES games are available for download this week on the Wii virtual console. Choose between a classic baseball-arcade sim and a puzzler inspired by everyone's favorite dinosaur sidekick.

Yoshi's Cookie (1992, NES, 500 Wii points): Nintendo really tried to cash in on the whole Tetris era by developing many Nintendo-branded spin-offs. In Yoshi's Cookie, you'll take on 100 stages of cookie-themed puzzle action. Bases Loaded (1988, NES, 500 Wii points): A true classic, Bases Loaded brought arcade-style baseball into the home. Great gameplay combined with innovations, such as the first-ever view from the pitching … Read more

Secret Service hates photography?

I don't know if it's silly that this surprises me, but apparently London's police aren't the only ones who have a problem with photography. According to a report on wusa9.com, the Web site of a local news station in Washington, the United States Secret Service asked a man outside the stadium of the Washington National's baseball team to delete a photo he took that included one of the stadium's security checkpoints. President George W. Bush was in the stadium to throw the first pitch for the team's opening day.

I know that … Read more

Radar love for any baseball glove

Sure, the NCAA is still in the midst of its yearly exercise in madness, but yesterday was an even more exciting day in sports. That's right, it's baseball season!

And this gadget, seen on Boing Boing Gadgets, is an excellent excuse to say so on Crave.

Practice your fastball and fine-tune your change-up in the comfort of your own backyard with Glove Radar, a device that snaps into any mitt.

For $70, it can detect the speed of pitches between 20 mph and 120 mph, and claims to be accurate within 1 mph. Glove Radar uses uses Doppler … Read more

Baseball 2008: Parsing prof's pennant picks

So how do you think your favorite baseball team will fare in 2008? New Jersey Institute of Technology's Bruce Bukiet has some fodder for the baseball buffs among us.

For the past seven seasons, Bukiet has been using a mathematical model to predict how many games each Major League Baseball team is likely to win. The Mets fan sees his team edging the Braves in the NL East divisional race, with 92 wins. In the AL East, Bukiet's formula has the Yankees and Red Sox both finishing up with 98 victories.

Of course, like any of the countless … Read more