ExpatNYC

I attended Fisk's "Voices of the Game" event at the Hall of Fame last weekend, where he described his new role with the Sox as a "reintroduction" to the organization. He mentioned his former teammates who now coach for the Sox--Baines, Walker--which gave me the impression that before too long we might see him coaching too. He mentioned Walt Hriniak as one of his mentors...hmm...

Here's the link to vote. Do it now.

Anyone watching the Tigers feed? I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

Late to this party, but I always love these kinds of threads. I was also silently screaming at Gamecast on my computer--in New York City. God I wish I could have seen that live.

QUOTE(lord chas @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 04:05 PM) we are gonna stink I think this is a real possibility. While I appreciate the optimism above, the fact is that the AL Central in '05 was nowhere near what it was this season, or what it will be next year. That's why our chances of going to the postseason next year are very, very low. IMHO, Kenny needed to blow up the team after the All Star break, but for some reason he didn't For some reason he let Pods and Grinderstad play when they should have been DFA'd to make room for the kids. Of course, what we're dealing with now, in large part, is the legacy of the '05-'06 off-season.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 9, 2007 -> 12:41 AM) Stone rules. We should be going for a sweep tomorrow night, but let's get 2 out of 3 anyways. With that pitching matchup, I like our chances. Stone does rule. And I think he makes Hawk a better announcer. I'd love Stone to be our full-time guy, actually. Anyway, great game--great win. Suckit, Tribe!

Isn't anyone worried about Fields's obvious difficulties with hitting 87mph fastballs down the middle of the plate? He made Mike Mussina look like Nolan Ryan.

White Sox front office: you are decimating your fan base with this move. Resign him for the love of God. He's one of your own. He's had one off year. He's 28. Do you want to win or not?

I'm so pissed right now that I can't even think straight. Jerry, Kenny: grow a pair and f***ing make this happen. You are in danger of losing fans.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jun 18, 2007 -> 11:14 PM) .....a rocket scientist like Erstad to figure that out. I was talking to Dick Williams about this, and he said that Al Kaline was a tremendous base runner. I remember sitting down with Yaz when we were talking about Catfish Hunter, and he told me that this was the greatest assembly of talent he's ever seen to struggle this long. Word for word.

Awesome--on the MLB.tv feed, they accidentally cut into the commercial break and you could hear Hawk still complaining about Owen's move: "You gotta, you gotta know you're dealing with one of the greatest arms behind the plate. I mean, Jesus Christ. It doesn't take a--" then it cut off. How do you think he completed that sentence?

Would have been nice if he hadn't dealt Ross Gload.

I stupidly ponied up for Spring Training, when there wasn't as much stress on their servers--fewer connections, fewer games. And my experience in the first two weeks of the regular season was horrible--choppy steams, out-of-sync audio, dropped connections. The Mosaic software is a work in progress: they've been releasing new builds several times a week. To MLB.com's credit, they set up a blog to address tech-related problems, but it's become little more than a venue for excuse-making. The MLB.com monkeys regularly chalk problems up to the inadequacies of users' computers. Doubtless sometimes that's the case. But I'm a user who streams on both Mac and PCs, two PCs--one new, one really old. The really old one handles the streams the best. It's insane. And recently some of the MLB.com staffers have been getting snippy (granted, their customers are extremely frustrated). I'm advocating a coordinated baseball blog movement to sign a petition. You can also e-mail Bob Bowman at MLB.com. Luckily my cable company offers a $90 rebate to Extra Innings customers from last year, but still. They pushed this product through too soon, and didn't have the server capacity to adequately serve their paying customers. Embarrassing.

I can tell you that after I left Chicago, where I was born and raised, the feeling of rivalry faded--and it was intense while I was in Chitown. Once you're a Chicagoan in a strange land, you just want Chicago to do well, even if that means a Cubs win--but never when they play the Sox.

Shocker: MLB rejects iN Demand's offer.

Fair enough. Like I said, it's entirely possible that I was looking away when he threw poorly. The breaking stuff I saw looked good. Just wanted to poll the eyes out here to get a better sense of the overall performance. Thanks!

Just wondering if anyone else caught today's game against the Brew Crew. I caught some of it, not all of it, but managed to see Bobby throw a couple innings--not straight through--and thought he looked damn tight. Anyone else have that impression, or was the awesome 400k stream from MLB.TV working some hocus pocus?

Mac users are sheeot out of luck, though, since Windows Media Player for Mac is one of the buggiest programs ever written. And Mosaic requires OS X 4.5 to run. Incidentally, the 700K stream comes with the premium package ($120/year), but not the regular one ($90). Still, I'd much rather be able to kick back on my couch, flip on the Extra Innings channels, and watch some ball, rather than run wires from my computer to my TV and hope my Mactastic WMP doesn't freeze up ten minutes into the game. (Which it always does.)

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Mar 5, 2007 -> 06:00 PM) That is kind of silly if you ask me. I have DirecTV and I have had Comcast cable. Both have HD packages, but the HD picture that I get from DirecTV is much much better than the one I received from Comcast cable. I don't know if it is the quality of cables of if Comcast has to use converters or what not, but you can definitely tell a huge difference in quality. I won't get VOIP for a while. I don't trust it. You have to get DSL because you need a phone line to plug into the DTV receiver? I don't get it. I too much prefer it to Comcast. What does COmcast offer DirecTV customers besides On Demand? Are there any channels that Comcast customers get that you can't get on DirecTV? Sorry, I should have explained myself better. DTV requires a phone line (a land line, no VOIP). Since I had to get a land line for DTV anyway, I figured I'd bundle it with DSL and save a few bucks a month. (DSL is also cheaper as a stand-alone product than is a cable Internet connection.) I can't speak to Comcast's HD picture quality, but my Cablevision HD picture is excellent. Everything I've read about DTV HD seems to indicate that DTV over-compresses their HD signal, resulting in lower picture quality. Obviously I'm not in Chicago, which is why I'm so pissed about this Extra Innings deal. I want to watch the Sox in my living room. It's become a summer ritual since I left Chicago. Bud Selig, dolt that he is, seems not to grasp that he is making it difficult for baseball's most loyal fans to follow their teams. Having had both cable and DTV, I can report that outages with DTV were much more frequent than with cable. Plus, as I said, they make you pay for HD, and my cable company doesn't. Add to that the fact that if you want HD and you want a DVR with DTV, you have to shell out several hundred dollars before your service even starts. DTV's HD DVRs are super-expensive. With cable, I pay $5 a month to rent my HD DVR.

I wonder if DirecTV or MLB has employees who troll blogs... Anyway, Kalapse lists all the reasons one wouldn't want to or be able to switch to DirecTV. For my part, I live in an apartment building that does not allow satellite dishes. But I also have a triple-play package from my cable company, which I can't really afford to break up. Moreover, my cable company offers free HD--there's no "HD package," like there is with DirecTV. In fact, I left DTV a year ago when I bought an HD set because their HD offering is a joke. I haven't missed them at all. My cable service is reliable, the VOIP phone rocks, and the Internet connection is fast as hell--much faster than my crappy DSL line I had when I was with DirecTV. Why DSL? Because DTV required me to plug a phone line into the receiver.

Good grief. It's like reading Rush Limbaugh. The government has a role to play in breaking up monopolies. The NFL Sunday Ticket deal was also examined by the feds for reasons that should be obvious. And now the MLB deal does nothing but restrict consumer choice. That sort of business practice is antithetical to free-market capitalism.

Once again, Major League Baseball kicks its fans in the balls. Read it and weep, cable subscribers.

Not sure if you guys have seen this piece yet, but it's worth a look. Also from that article: "According to Guillen, Juan Uribe is scheduled to arrive in Tucson on Thursday night and should report to camp Friday."

Does anyone know whether they've worked out the kinks for Macs? My understanding is that Windows Media Player for Mac won't go to full screen mode when it's embedded. This seems like a major problem.

Looks like MLB.TV has added a "premium" package for $120 for the season or $20 a month. They have a demo of the new 700k stream right here. According to the product comparison page, only the premium package allows for 700k streaming. But the non-premium MLB.TV page claims the streams will be at 400k, then directly below that that they will reach 700k. Do you think they could get their act together?