It’s baseball week at TechGraphs. To commemorate, we’re bringing you baseball-themed content all of Opening Week.

A few days before Opening Day, mostly every year, I watch The Natural. It’s been my favorite baseball movie since I was nine. Watching Roy Hobbs bust a light tower builds my excitement for the start of the baseball season. For those of you itching for some baseball outside of the opening week of Major League Baseball, I’ve compiled a list of every baseball movie currently on Netflix along with the Rotten Tomatoes audience score to serve as a helpful guide to your baseball-viewing needs.

I’m utilizing the audience score, which is based on votes from readers, rather than the Tomatometer, because I hate critics. Also, there’s a ton more scores from the audience (think 2,000 or more) than critics (around 25-ish). I’ve sorted the flicks in ascending order starting with highest audience score. Remember, people – this is Netflix. You won’t find Bull Durham. After reading the list, you may actually wish that Trouble with the Curve was streaming.

Editors note: All online comments unedited. A lot of (sic) is implied.

Ken Burns: Baseball

Year: 1994

Need to know: It’s 18 hours long. If you’re passionate about baseball, you’ll love it. If you’re not, you may fall asleep rather quickly. Binge it and tell me how that works out for ya.

Audience Score: N/A

Encapsulating comment: Brilliant documentary on the astounding history of America’s pastime with the superb direction of Ken Burns and the vast number of talents from around the world who lend their views on the classic game. Amazing footage never seen before. – Tim Cox via IMDB

The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Year: 2014

Audience Score: 95%

Need to know: This is a Netflix original documentary about the only independent baseball team in 1973 out of Oregon. From Netflix: Their spirit was contagious, and during their short reign, the Mavericks — a restaurant owner turned manager, left-handed catcher, and blackballed pitcher among them — brought independence back to baseball and embodied what it was all about: the love of the game.

Encapsulating comment:  While probably better appreciated by people already invested in this world, it still offers underdog-rooting fun for the rest of us. Clearly a heartfelt look at a relatively interesting part of American sports history? May work better as an actual narrative. – Matt G

Ballplayer: Pelotero

Year: 2012

Audience Score: 88%

Need to know: Narrated by John Leguizamo and including an executive producer title for Bobby Valentine, this documentary looks at MLB training camps in the Dominican Republic.

Encapsulating comment: Kinda the Hoop Dreams for baseball in the Dominican Republic. MLB does not come off looking good in this. Recommended for baseball fans. – dteller1

Home Run

Year: 2013

Audience Score: 82%

Need to know: Big-time baseball player gets a DUI, agent sends him back to the small town he grew up in to coach the youth baseball team. Doc Hollywood meets a jock strap.

Encapsulating comment: It’s not as if the director and cast don’t possess The Natural quality. All involved perform their best at Stealing Home and that’s no Bull Durham. Still, every moviegoer knows the Angle in the Outfield here. Hell, when parodied in the hilarious HBO comedy Eastbound and Down, it sadly rings truer. Getting literally preached at from the pulpit, however, never feels like a great night at the movies. – Jeff Boam

The Bad News Bears

Year: 1976

Audience Score: 80%

Need to know: After high school I played slow-pitch softball for about 12 years. For half that time, I had long, blonde hair, down to about my shoulders. I pretty much tried to be the adult version of Tanner. I even played shortstop. If you need to know what this movie is about, you shouldn’t be reading this post.

Encapsulating comment: This set the standard for countless sports movies, and, while it’s not so revelatory now, I’m sure it was quite shocking/refreshing to have a kids movie have such an edge to it what with the swearing and politically incorrect nature. It’s less vulgar than the remake, but while it’s more family oriented, it’s still got some racial epithets that wouldn’t fly now a days if said by white characters. – Chris Weber

BASEketball

Year: 1998

Audience Score: 74%

Need to know: Starring the Southpark guys, BASEketball tells the tale of three slackers who make up a new, pure and innocent sport in their driveway, only to find it turned into a major corporate and wildly popular professional league.

Encapsulating comment: Well it was watchable. – Wahida K

The Perfect Game

Year: 2011

Audience Score: 68%

Need to know: Cheech Marin is in it. A true story about the 1957 Monterrey, Mexico boys team that overcame poverty and limited resources to reach the Little League World Series. Also, Cheech Marin is in it.

Encapsulating comment: The Perfect Game is harmless and good hearted but it feels too cliche and unmemorable to be an effective sports film. – Bradley Wright

The Benchwarmers

Year: 2006

Audience Score: 64%

Need to know: This looks awful. To be honest, I’ve never seen it. I just can’t look at David Spade’s haircut. Somehow it got a decent audience score. Which now makes me question my use over the critics, who HATED THIS (11%).

Encapsulating comment: The worst “comedy” that I ever saw these days. – Lucas Martins

The Yankles

Year: 2012

Audience Score: 63%

Need to know: A former MLBer’s career ended due to alcoholism, his wife left him and he went to prison following his third DUI. Sounds fun, huh? He ends up coaching the baseball team of an Orthodox Jewish school as part of his parole, mainly because no one else wanted him around their kids.

Encapsulating comment: The best kosher baseball movie out there, I love watching sports movies especially baseball ones, you can never have enough of them, and this ones totally kosher, so don’t be a putz or a smuck and watch it. Ralph from Happy Days is in, flashback, is pretty good, as the dad, Donny gives his Most in this part. – mike hawke

A Mile in His Shoes

Year: 2012

Audience Score: 59%

Need to know: We have a Dean Cain sighting, people. The story of Mickey Tussler, a young man with a type of autism who is recruited by a passionate coach to pitch for his minor league team.

Encapsulating comment: Based on the novel, The Legend of Micky Tussler by Frank Nappi, comes the Canadian film, A Mile In His Shoes. While the basic story remains the same, the film was significantly different than the novel. The new story transfers much better to film, but takes far too much away from the original novel. – Todd Smith

One Hit From Home

Year: 2014

Audience Score: 57%

Need to know: Hey Hollywood – stop writing scripts about a former star that leads a crappy team to glory. IT’S BEEN DONE. This one isn’t any different. At least this guy isn’t an alcoholic like half of the other movies on this list (that I can tell).

Encapsulating comment: There are no reviews. If you’re going to watch it, make sure you’re doing laundry, or something else productive.

The Pitcher and the Pin-Up

Year: 2005

Audience Score: 55%

Need to know: It’s a romantic comedy. Kill two birds with one stone and cross this one off your baseball movies list while scoring brownie points with your woman friend for suggesting a movie with romance.

Encapsulating comment: This was a bad movie Sunday selection by myself, but it could have been a lot worse. Acting was pretty bad and she is still pretty hot, even though this was made many years after her prime… – Ed M

Pastime

Year: 1991

Audience Score: 54%

Need to know: Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) and Ernie Banks appear in this story about two minor league players, both outcasts in the clubhouse, who develop a common bond over the love of the game.

Encapsulating comment: This is like one of those movies you stumble upon at 3am, sitting on your couch, flipping through channels. For some reason, it takes me back to my high school days of baseball. Good times. – kinadeon

The Sandlot 2

Year: 2005

Audience Score: 41%

Need to know: I had no idea that this existed. Unfortunately for James Earl Jones, he signed on for the sequel.

Encapsulating comment: This movie is probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life. This movie pretty much tries to re-make the original classic, but they fail miserably. – Japes.

Dealin’ With Idiots

Year: 2013

Audience Score: 33%

Need to know: As IFC Films noted, a hilarious satire about the culture surrounding youth baseball leagues in Los Angeles, this fully improvised film also features a who’s who of notable comedians and actors including Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman), Fred Willard (Modern Family), Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad), J.B. Smoove (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Gina Gershon (How to Make It in America), Kerri Kenney-Silver (The New Normal), Jami Gertz (The Neighbors), Timothy Olyphant (Justified), Richard Kind (Argo), Steve Agee (The New Girl), David Sheridan (The Love Boat), Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

Yet it still sucked. Critics hated it, too (37% Tomatometer).

Encapuslating comment: funny people, but not a funny movie. a few chuckles but almost all of it misses. – Cody C

Headin’ Home

Year: 1920

Audience Score: Just six ratings, so not enough to get a score. The average rating, out of 5, was 2.8.

Need to know: The sole purpose of this picture was to make money exploiting the “King of Swat,” Babe Ruth, in his motion picture debut.

Encapsulating comment: The first movie of Babe Ruth’s not-so-illustrious acting career is this wheezy silent about a small-town lad becoming a big-time slugger. Ruth portrays someone named “Babe,” but the character’s cornball backstory has little to do with Ruth’s own history. This Babe is no troubled orphan, but a polite mama’s boy with a homemade bat and a spunky younger sister named — get this — “Pigtails.” Ruth flashes none of the wisecracking charisma you’ll hope to see, and there isn’t even any notable footage of him playing ball. Meanwhile, the title cards izz all written inna contrived, po-folks dialect that culdn’t bee mo’ condescendin’ to th’ movie’s target audience. Fer heaven’s sake, th’ Babe deserved better than this. – Eric B

30 For 30 stuff

Netflix also has some ESPN documentaries to watch, which may be far more interesting than 75 percent of the list above.

You Don’t Know Bo: The Legend of Bo Jackson

Four Days in October – Red Sox propaganda

Jordan Rides the Bus

The Day the Series Stopped

Knuckleball! (Not a 30 For 30 production)

David Ortiz in the Moment

Silly Little Game – Charts the origins of fantasy sports games from a small lunchtime group known as the rotisserie league to the multi-million dollar industry it is today. The show also explores how none of the founders made money or even play the game anymore.

The House of Steinbrenner

Fernando Nation

Little Big Men – The story of Cody Webster, Kirkland, WA, Little League, and the biggest upset in the history of Little League.

The Baseball Chronicles

Deadball (Deddoboru)

Made out of Japan in 2011, this….looks…awesome. Per IMDB:

Baseball prodigy Jubeh Yakyu (Tak Sakaguchi) is the most feared and dangerous juvenile delinquent in all of Japan. After accidentally causing the death of his father with a super-powered, deadly fireball pitch, Jubeh swore off baseball and became a criminal and now, at 17, has been sent to the Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory for hardened criminals. Headmistress Ishihara, the granddaughter of a World War II Nazi collaborator, runs the institution with an iron fist and the enthusiastic help of her sadistic assistant, Ilsa. After arriving at the hellhole, Jubeh soon learns from governor Mifune that his long-lost, younger brother Musashi had also done time there after a murder spree, but had since died mysteriously.

We need a viewing party.

Next week the TechGraphs team is kicking off the opening week of Major League Baseball with content devoted to the grand old game. We’ll feature apps, websites and all tech that will soak you in all that is baseball. There is some interesting stuff in store, so be sure to check back with us next week.

In the meantime, here’s a little something for you to enjoy as you count down the hours until your team’s first pitch.

Baseball Reference is offering its holy grail of baseball statistics, Play Index, free through April 15. Sign up here and enter the coupon code “analytics”. An active Baseball Reference account is needed to sign up.

Play Index features five main search functions: Season Finder, Game Finder, Split Finder, Streak Finder and Event Finder. There’s also a tool that spits out a list of batter versus pitcher results. Almost anything you ever wanted to know can be found at Play Index, if you know where to look.

Need some examples of the power of Play Index? Check out @AceballStats on Twitter.

#Dodgers Pedro Guerrero batted .310/.383/.520 (151 OPS+) in 947 games from 1980-87. Those are some damn good numbers.

— Ace of MLB Stats (@AceballStats) March 31, 2015

More Pedro Guerrero, please.

Baseball Reference also put together 34 searches you need to know that you can check out.

Let’s walk through a search together, you know, to get acquainted. Before I read the comments on the free trial page, I never knew I wanted to know the career leader in walk-off home runs. But now I’m obsessed. Commenter Richard Chester responded to the original inquiry from the comments with steps to reach the results.

1. Go to Event Finder -> Batting by Team.
2. The Search Form will have 2014 in the drop down, All Teams and Home Runs. Click on Get Report.
3. Here are some fun results. But this is only 2014 and home runs in general. Let’s specify this further. Click walk-off, which is in the middle, above the results. In the Search Form in the upper left, change the year to 1938, click the to? button and set the range up to 2014. Get the report.

As you can see, Jim Thome has the most career walk-off home runs in MLB history with 13. Frank Robinson and Mickey Mantle are right behind him with 12. Albert Pujols and David Ortiz lead active players with 11.

Roy Face, who pitched 16 seasons from 1953 to 1969 and went 18-1 in ’59 despite never starting a game, has allowed the most walk-off homers with 16.

I can litter this page with nuggets of data. Yankee Stadium has hosted the most walk-off dingers (145). May is the most common month that walk-off taters occur. And the Cleveland Indians lead all teams with 178 walk-off homers. The Los Angeles Dodgers are second with 170. Scroll down a little further on the page and every walk-off homer recorded from 1940 is chronicled, in order. Was there a walk-off in your honor on the day you were born?

Play Index subscriptions are $36 for one year.

When Brady Aiken announced last week that he underwent Tommy John surgery to repair the torn UCL in his left arm, he didn’t Tweet it, he didn’t Instagram it and his agent didn’t issue a press release. Rather, the 2014 first overall pick in baseball’s first-year player draft used The Players’ Tribune to publish a column in his voice and to get in front of the story. A strange story filled with little facts, a lot of conjecture and an ending which seemingly screams “I told you so.” It’s the ending that Aiken and his agent want to change. So they did, with the help of Derek Jeter’s digital baby.

Jeter created The Players’ Tribune as a platform for “athletes and newsmakers to share information” as he’s quoted in the About section. On Thursday, David Ortiz used the outlet to complain that he’s the most tested player in baseball for substance abuse. It created enough of a buzz that the New York Times printed an article about the inner workings of the website and how the Ortiz story came about. Read the story if you want to know the details, as it’s a great article. Spoiler alert – the athletes don’t write the story themselves. Also, Santa Claus is your parents.

My interest in this “digital venture” of Jeter’s, as the Times called it, is the idea of controlling the narrative. Michael Wolff succinctly summed up this idea for USA Today:

Among the most prevalent and up-to-date phrases in business, politics and savvy American life is “controlling the narrative.”

That is, telling it your way, before someone else gets to tell it — and possibly tell it better — their way. And getting the public to relate to you on a more intimate level: In a social-media world, being impersonal is being out of it.

And when it comes to the Tribune, an athlete can do all these things with the cleanest image of any super star athlete of any time standing behind him or her. For those athletes with questionable credibility, the hope is Jeter’s iconic integrity can muffle the distractions one brings to a story and allow the reader to really hear the athlete’s voice.

Richard Sandomir’s Times piece echoes the sentiment:

The roster of athletes (and former players) featured on the site is lengthy and has included Jason Collins, Danica Patrick, Billie Jean King, Paul Pierce, Larry Sanders, Tyson Chandler, Eric LeGrand, Elena Delle Donne, Chris Long, Andrew McCutchen and Sue Bird. The accumulated message is that athletes, with help from a website overseen by an image-conscious superstar, can freely tell their stories and share their views as if they were credentialed writers. If they ultimately cannot bypass the ravenous news media in locker rooms or the digital hordes of social media, at least they can better set their own agenda.

When I first read that Aiken posted the news at the Tribune I rolled my eyes. Well, first, my story-idea radar perked up, but then I rolled my eyes.

Maybe I’m just being cynical. But how could this in any way keep the media and fans from slapping Jeff Luhnow and the Houston Astros on the back after Aiken and the Astros couldn’t agree to terms because the Astros feared the risk of Aiken’s almost UCL-less (or almost) elbow? Ludnow was crucified and the Astros public perception trampled after the general manager fumbled negotiations and ultimately lost fifth-round pick Jacob Nix as well. As Houston Chronicle reporter Evan Drellich, who has superbly covered the saga, tweeted last week “what Brady Aiken wrote should be taken as a press release.”

To my surprise, it’s kind of worked.

Know this – Aiken’s agent is Casey Close, the same as Jeter’s. Close constantly used the media to try and gain leverage over the Astros during negotiations last summer. Close voicerfously banged the “My client isn’t injured” drum, painted Ludnow as the villain and once the signing deadline expired, appeared to have won the public relations war.

Close recognized that any elbow injury to Aiken would erase everything. Ludnow and the Astros would come out as smart, right and justified. And Close would take the blame as to why Aiken didn’t sign a $5 million offer on the final day of negotiations (down from the $6.5 million initial offer, but up from the $3.1 million low-ball offer), missed a year of pitching development and a probable first-round slide in June’s 2015 draft.

So Close reaches out to his best client ever, Jeter, secures space for Aiken to break the news, and does it his way. Frank Sinatra surely would be proud.

Since last summer, a lot of people have wondered how I could have turned down a multi-million-dollar signing bonus after being picked first in the Draft. Now, I know they’ll probably be wondering about it again. I can honestly say I don’t regret not signing. It was a very difficult decision, but it also was an informed decision based on circumstances only a few people know the truth about. My family and I planned for all the possible outcomes. We weighed the pros and cons, talked with friends and mentors and doctors whose opinions we value and discussed it over a number of family dinners. This wasn’t a decision we made lightly.

Brady Aiken, The Players’ Tribune, March 26, 2015

Close and Aikens attempt to tackle the pending issues head on. First, they spell out why they don’t regret the decision not to sign. And in doing so, they jab the Astros with a quick left to the jaw. “The money wasn’t the only factor to consider,” Aiken wrote. “I wanted to play somewhere I felt comfortable, with a support system I felt would lay the groundwork for a successful and long career. Making sure I had that in place was worth the frustration of not being able to get on with my career sooner.”

Second, the Aiken camp has solely focused on preparing for the 2015 draft. Aiken said he was throwing harder and better, his workouts were his best and he was looking towards the future. The message is that Aiken was ready to be another top five pick in the draft. In fact, he may be a better pitcher than a year ago, despite not playing competitively.

And his final point, he’s just a human being. Just like the fans. He’s hit an obstacle, he’s going to work hard, and God willing, he’ll come out on top.

I already have a plan in place to rehab my arm, and I plan to come back better than ever. I also know God has a plan for me. Injuries are part of the job, but so is coming back. I can’t wait to get back on the mound. I can’t wait to compete again.

And to my surprise, this whole thing kind of worked. Unless I missed it, Houston hasn’t thrown the Astros and Luhnow a parade (which I would’ve done if I was in the GM’s seat). Astros blog The Crawfish Boxes chronicled tweets from media following the news. Drellich wrote the most pro-Astros tweet when he said there wasn’t any doubt that this validates the Astros concern. But then a day later he penned this lede: “If you think Brady Aiken’s Tommy John surgery proves the Astros right about the unsigned draft pick, you’re wrong.” Jim Callis of mlb.com took a more even, rational approach. This does add some credibility back to Luhnow, but no one “won” this.

To each side’s credit, since the Aiken story was published, Close and Luhnow have remained quiet. It’s the smart thing to do, to avoid us hating either one of them more. In the end, this is a story about a gifted teenager caught up in the middle of finances and an ugly negotiation played in the media who has suffered a setback and can’t fulfill his dream of pitching professionally for 16 more months. Aiken isn’t an asset, he’s a young man with a family, dreams and a face – not just a high-priced arm. And had Drellich or Ken Rosenthal or any other baseball reporter broke this story, I think this aspect of the story would’ve been lost.

Players and agents can’t control the media. How boring would that be? SO MANY CLICHES! And just because a player gets in front of their story, doesn’t mean everything is peaches. The media digs, it follows up and it talks to other people in the story, whereas the athlete is giving his or her view. And a good reporter can crush a poorly-handled article “written” by a player, thrashing the credibility they were hoping to gain.

But in this instance, it’s helped. The Players’ Tribune allowed us all to listen to Aiken’s voice first. He set the tone. And unless Close or Luhnow speak up to add to it, this is what the story is. While it may not be the exact ending Aiken and Close hoped for, it’s certainly far better than the one I envisioned — the one where Luhnow wakes up the next morning in a Houston mansion naked in a bath of champagne, monkeys smoking cigars and a “I told you so” tattoo on his bum.

Andrew McCutchen’s dreadlocks are dead locks, people. The Pittsburgh Pirates superstar cut off his famous coils of matted hair and kicked off an online auction today to raise money for Pirate Charities. The current high bid at the time this post was published is $300. The winning bidder will also receive an autographed baseball and the ability to create an army of McCutchen clones. But Dr. Ian Malcom would probably just poo all over that brilliant idea.

There are ten available locks, which will be MLB authenticated along with the autographed ball. Funds raised by the auction and his personal charity, Cutch’s Crew, will be dispersed throughout the Pittsburgh community.

In case you wondered, Mrs. McCutchen approves.

My man looks BANGIN’.

— Maria McCutchen (@MariaHanslovan) March 26, 2015

Let’s hope someone compares McCutchen’s MLB StatCast times from 2014 and 2015 – dreads versus no dreads.

For conspiracy theorists that don’t believe he ever had real dreads in the first place, McCutchen’s got you covered.

View the auction and bid here. The minimum bidding increment is $10. Bidding will end on April 2 at 10 p.m. Eastern. Shipping rates apply and will be added to final bids, so be sure to check that out.

Analytics is everywhere in the sports world. I’m not telling you anything new, and I don’t need to convince you, so I won’t. The tech world continues to create new ways to compile data on the field that range beyond statistics. Whether it’s video tracking (Major League Baseball Advanced Media’s StatCast) or wearables, a player’s speed, route and jump off the ball can be measured, compiled and analyzed.

Off the field, things are vastly different. As I wrote in December, the Milwaukee Bucks hired a facial coding expert to build an emotion metrics database in an attempt to quantify the previously unquantifiable – character, personality and chemistry. The Bucks are looking for an edge in the analytics race, a race which most teams have finally joined after sitting the past few years cautiously watching from the sidewalk. Will measuring intangibles be that edge in performance data analysis?

SportsBoard, a player assessment platform, and HUMANeX Ventures, which specializes in identifying and developing non-physical talent, are banking on it. The two partnerted in January to provide coaches the tools to recognize the best physical and non-physical talents of athletes and develop players to reach their true potential. They have many common clients in the Big Ten, Ivy League, PAC 12 and SEC. One client in particular, former UCLA softball head coach Sue Enquist, suggested the two companies marry tech and science to help her, and others, coach in a more efficient way. And so the relationship began.

The platform SportsBoard developed caters mainly to college coaches, however they also work with US Women’s Soccer and IMG Academy. Its streamlined assessment processes helps coaches identify and track high school recruits, analyze practices and games track results of various clinics or camps and create, distribute and montior strength and conditioning plans for its athletes.

Meanwhile, HUMANeX developed something called the Select7, which assesses a player’s intangibles (leadership, will to win, desire, mental toughness, etc.) and to what extent an athlete possesses those traits. Once an athlete takes the 60-question assessment, the results feed over that player’s SportsBoard portfolio, and a coach can review the athlete’s stats, notes scouts have scribbled, physical prowess and whether Timmy Football’s personality is best suited for his team.

“Until coaches embrace this, they’ll forever be drinking from a firehose,” said SportsBoard CEO Gregg Jacobs. Prior to developing SportsBoard, Jacobs worked in the enterprise software industry for 20 years and spent two years working at Price Waterhouse.

Of note, 60 percent of SportsBoard’s men’s college basketball clients made the NCAA Tournament. Small sample size alert — three schools, Ohio State, Georgia State and St. John’s participated in March Madness, with the two former teams winning their first-round games.

Brad Black, CEO of HUMANeX, said his company is researching athletes every day.

“Our goal is to create a relevant, impactful mirror with this assessment,” Black said. “We’re trying to give the world a pin number to their tool box. If you don’t know what’s in your tool box, how do you know what tools you can use?”

Clients include professional athletes, a Heisman trophy winner and Olympians. He said his database of assessments can be used to calibrate a current athlete, say a four-star high school recruit, against a former legend, and compare common traits. As a result, Black has identified several traits that the most successful athletes all have in common, which will be reviewed later.

Black graciously agreed to let me take the Select7. For a frame of reference, I started playing baseball when I was 9. I made all-star squads every year until high school, made varsity and then hit a wall. Part of it was because my peers caught up to my physically (I hit puberty in fifth grade). But I think a more damaging part was my mental toughness. Looking back, I didn’t deal with failure well. I wasn’t able to turn the page and ignore a hitless game with a throwing error. Ultimately, rather than work harder on my deficiencies, I just quit. So last week when I took the test, I tried to put myself in that 17-year-old baseball player’s mindset that I had. But I think some of my more mature thoughts snuck its way in to my results.

The assessment took about 20 minutes and included questions about character (keeping promises, doing the right thing type of stuff), goal setting, preparation, how I handled failure and how I was as a teammate. I figured my results would indicate how little mental toughness I had, scold me and prove that it was my downfall. But it didn’t. Rather, it highlights my seven strongest attributes. Some of these I found on the baseball field, but a lot are attributes that have carried over in to my personal and professional life.

Goal Orientation

This is an example of my more mature mindset bleeding over in to my results. If my 17-year-old baseball-playing self created plans to grow and ensured I met my desired outcomes, I at least wouldn’t have quit prior to my senior season, and would have maximized my physical abilities. Rather, goal orienting is something I’ve done more since college. And while it’s not written down for anyone to read, I have ideas of where I’ve wanted to be, put myself there, and where I want to go.

Passion

I fell in love with baseball when I was 8. Roy Hobbs was my first favorite baseball player, followed by Wally Joyner. I grew up an Angels fan, mainly because of all my Orange County friends in the third grade liked the Angels. It helped that Wally World took the region by storm and the Angels had a good team in 1986. I somehow was drafted in my first season, at 9, to play in the 10-12 year-old majors division – the one that competes on ESPN every August for the Little League World Series. I don’t think I put one ball in play during my try outs. But my coach saw a tall gangly kid with good hands, a decent arm and a project. My coach handed me my White Sox jersey with 9 as my number. “Just like in The Natural,” I told my dad. I was stoked.

Passion matters. Check out the difference between Russell Wilson and JaMarcus Russell and tell me it doesn’t.

Achiever

An achiever sets high expectations which pushes one towards excellence. I do have this. As most are, I’m my own worst critic. My problem was that 20 years ago, I kept it all inside. If I wasn’t achieving, I’d quit. I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t put in extra hours or figure out new ways to improve. I gave up. It’s hard to achieve if you don’t try.

Flexibility

This one is innate. It’s always been a part of my personality. Laid back. Chill. I roll with the punches. I might not like the change, and it might take me a bit to adapt, but I recongize the need to do so. Unfortunately, it makes figuring out dinner difficult with the Mrs. “I’m cool with whatever, babe.” An hour later and we’re still sitting on the couch in sweats.

Resilience 

This is another attribute that’s developed as I’ve grown older. If I had this in high school, I would’ve achieved more. And really, it’s only developed out of necessity. In 2012 my 4-year-old son died following a drowning accident at a neighbor’s pool party. My wife has miscarried three times in two years. I’ve been kicked in the nuts, stepped on and tea-bagged by life for the last two-and-a-half years. Yet I still get out of bed every morning. I’m not living life through the bottom of a bottle as much as I wish I could. People have called me strong. I’m not. I just do what I have to do for my twin 4-year-olds and my wife. I have to keep getting up when life knocks me down. There are no other options.

Activator

This is the energizer. As you know, I’m laid back. However in the dugout, I became the person I needed to in order to help the team win. Does my pitcher need a boost? I’ll give it to him. Is my team playing tight and gripping? I’ll loosen the mood.

I help out with my kids’ tee-ball team. Before this weekend’s game, I was slapping helmets of 5-year-olds, nudging their shoulders and trying to pump them up to play. I’m pretty sure they thought I was just a creep.

Mastery

Russell Wilson and his Surface Pro come to mind on this one. An athlete with this trait has a strong learning orientation. He studies and becomes an expert in his sport. Not to pick on JaMarcus again, but I doubt Mastery scored highly in his Select7.

Black shared the common traits found in successful athletes. Competitive is the most obvious trait. Others include achiever, which Black says is more of a talented trait than competitor drive, since an achiever is always putting the pedal to the floor; passion, as an athlete is more likely to choose sacrificing for his love of the sport than focusing on parties or an awesome social life; and grit, which features a strong fortitude, resolve and courage. Black added other features that stand out to coaches, including mastery and coachability. 

SportsBoard and HUMANeX hope their venture leads to providing clients with a complete picture of athletes, both physical and non-physical, with measurable data.

“Coaches don’t get the physical wrong,” Black said. “They just don’t know the non-physical.”

(Image courtesy of SportsBoard)

The drones are coming. Maybe. Someday. I hope. Fox Sports tested flying cameras in a high-flying sport over the weekend as it used drones to capture video during the AMA Supercross Series broadcast at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, IN. According to USA Today, Fox will utilize drones in upcoming golf coverage, as well.

“If we can track a motorbike doing 30-40 mph, we can track anything in sport,” Brad Cheney, director of technical operations at Fox Sports, told USA Today. “We can certainly track a wide receiver only doing 19 mph.”

HeliVideo, a company based in Austin, Texas approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, developed the eight-propeller drones used during the test run. Each unit costs $25,000. While ESPN used drones in limited action during the X Games, it’s believed this is the first use indoors. Monster Energy, the named sponsor of the motocross event, published the below video on YouTube Saturday as licensed pilots flew three drones during a simulated race.

While this is a positive step towards the use of drones in telecasts of the big three sports, the USA Today reported “it took layers of approval from lawyers and risk management types” to pull off this coverage, so imagine the bureaucratic headaches involved with securing permission from say, the National Football League.

Leagues aim to protect themselves from injuries to players, or even worse, fans. But come on, corporate suits. These are *licensed* pilots. How could you not trust one?

Awful Announcing reasonably estimates, based on the USA Today report, that live play telecasts will include drones within the next three years. But why do we have to wait that long? The technology is here today. Take a year, test the use of these drones on practice fields, Little League games or studio back lots during staff pick-up games. How about bringing some publicity to attention-starved sports like AVP Beach Volleyball or Major League Kickball ? I’m pretty sure Bradley Woodrum’s softball team will sign any and all releases put in front of them for a 24-pack and a new team bat.

Drones would make the wire-supported camera, limited in its use and documented to be dangerous, obsolete. A Fox Sports cable camera broke and injured ten fans in the stands during in 2013 during a Spring Cup Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway and damaged several cars, some severely, that were traveling at 195 mph.

It’s an obvious next step in sports broadcasting, and it’s frustrating that the tech, which is ready now, has developed faster than the heads of broadcast companies and the hand-cuffing legalese that bind the hands of network story tellers.

When my oldest son was 3 he was obsessed with Cars. While my infant twins napped, he and I would hide in the office to be quiet. I’d do my thing at the computer, and he’d sit next to me in an office chair enjoying some iPhone time. Most of his allotted 20 minutes he’d spend on YouTube, following whatever trail led from my Lightning McQueen or Mater search that got him going.

On one particular day I was writing and chronicled the following:

The Boy, my 3-year-old, is easily influenced by what he sees on television. If something catches his interest, he commits every atom in his being to that one thing. It started with Toy Story and culminated with us buying him a Jessie hat, which thankfully he’s stopped prancing around the house in.

Then came Cars, and that obsession is still rocking. In fact, he’s sitting on an office chair next to me, watching YouTube on my iPhone. I don’t know what the video is, but I hear an adult male speaking with a slight accent describing a new Cars toy he recently purchased. He’s reading the box, extracting said toy from its container and describing it in detail…and it’s creeping me out.

The rabbit hole that is YouTube is a dangerous thing. According to Childwise, which specializes in children’s research, YouTube is the most popular digital brand between for those 16 and under. That’s ahead of Minecraft, Facebook and Instragram. And because of the way it’s designed, it’s so easy for a child to head down a road flacked by flowers and rainbows with a search so innocent and end up lost in a dark, dense forest of inappropriateness.

One day, while cooking dinner, Jax asked to watch Bambi clips on YouTube. I was convinced this was safe, and he could hide in his room from the twins for a bit before it was time to eat. Other than the mom dying at the beginning, it’s about as innocent as one could get, right? A few days later, he started asking me about zombies. He said Bambi’s mom was a zombie. Whattttt. This kid’s crazy, I thought. After some interrogation, he said he saw it on YouTube. So I searched Google and found what he was talking about.

Facepalm. Thanks for nothing, Cartoon Network.

Google recently relieved, at least a bit, parents everywhere when it released its YouTube Kids app for Android and iOS. As the company blogged, “the app was designed to be easier for kids to use, with a brighter and bigger interface that’s perfect for small thumbs and pudgy fingers.” It also includes features for parents to set up how and for how long the app is used. There’s a timer. We parents love timers. “Sorry, Little Jimmy. The timer says it’s time to be done, not me. I know, I think the timer is a bad, stinky mean guy, too.”

My twins, Ellie the girl and Gray the boy, just turned 4. I sat down with them to explore the sports options on the YouTube Kids app. Here is some of what we found.

SPORTS BALLS by Pancake Manor

“You throw this ball, through the hoop – a basketball” is sung by orange and purple muppet-looking things to the tune of a pop-punk two-minute music video. It’s the most watchable option under the sports search results. And that’s only because I have a huge thing for Marty Feldman.

Ellie: She really liked it, and she likes the orange guy. I guess she likes bushy eyebrows.

Gray: At first, he didn’t like it. He said the guys were weird. At the end of the video he pivoted, said he liked it, and now likes the purple guy. One day I’ll make him watch Young Frankenstein and it’ll blow his mind.

Baby Big Mouth Surprise Egg Learn To Spell – Sports

This is one part of a series of videos that utilize magnet letters, plastic eggs and cheap prizes to grab a kid’s attention. The camera isolates on the letters and a faceless man’s hands, which somehow creeps me out after a bit.

Ellie: She stinkin’ loved this and wanted to watch more. She’s interested in letters right now and loved discovering the prize in the egg at the end. I think he had her at the pink wristbands.

Gray: He was indifferent. He watched it, seemed interested, but at the end just wanted to move on.

Sports Finger Family

I despised this one. This is developed by a British company and features sports popular across the pond such as soccer, tennis and cricket. It’s filled with bad rhymes and gross animation. The singing isn’t any good, either. At the end of each sport’s short rhyme, the player becomes a finger puppet. A freaking finger puppet. I’d rather my kids watch zombie cartoons.

Ellie: She liked the girl playing tennis. She had no idea what the point was with the finger puppets.

Gray: Also unimpressed with the finger puppets. He asked what cricket was, and rather than get in to it, I simply told him I had no idea. He was satisfied with that answer.

Sports for Kids – Learning About Sports

Maybe I’m just a grumpy, cynical jerk, but the narrator’s voice is unlistenable. I’d rather listen to Fran Drescher read every line of hers from The Nanny. And as my wife would confess, I want to rip out Drescher’s vocal chords, load them on to the next rocket heading to space and pray that it explodes. The script worked for me, as it explains the goal in the sport, and that’s helpful to teach kids just learning about sports.

Ellie: She asked to stop watching after volleyball, 32 seconds in.

Gray: He asked to stop watching much, much earlier.

There’s more of the same after searching “sports” in the app. And while these videos were pretty lame, they held the attention of my preschoolers well enough. And I know I could hand them this app and let them head down a road that won’t lead them to zombies, twerking or Fran Drescher.

It does have Baseball Bugs, so even if it some day does lead to them learning how to assemble a pipe bomb with everyday craft items, the app is still a winner in my book.

Baseball is 90 percent mental, according to Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. It’s the impetus behind Ned Yost’s Baseball Academics mobile app, which Retain Train developed with the help of the Kansas City Royals manager. Of course, as Berra infamously said, the other half is physical. But other apps can deal with that. Baseball Academics is like a zombie – it just wants your brains.

While Yost is the face of the app, Mike Socha — owner of Retain Train — is the medulla oblongata. He operates the most essential functions to make this whole thing work.

“The goal is to get kids thinking,” Socha said. “There are always going to be mental mistakes. We can’t cure that. But we want to get the kids thinking.

Essentially, the app is a quiz for each defensive position to help players learn which base to throw to. Socha described the app’s system, which is geared towards youth, as a perfect intersection between speed and accuracy, through repetition in a flash card format, to commit scenarios to memory.

Yost described the game to The Kansas City Star as a baseball IQ test. It’s a test that Socha hopes the baseball community will use to evaluate players, along with their stats and physical skills. He said he’s working with Perfect Game and Baseball Factory to have them adopt his Baseball Academic Rating (BAR), which is the score a player earns by playing “official games.”

Users start out on level one, which simply informs where the runners are, how many outs and what inning the game is in. In each game, the user scans the scenarios and touches the base to throw to. As users advance through the training and official games (trainings are required before playing an official game, which is used to calculate a player’s BAR), they level up. Level two adds the score and eventually your positioning is detailed as well. Socha said the game is currently built to level four, but the plan is to reach level seven. However, I wasn’t able to determine what differences the advancing levels offered.

I played five official games as a shortstop on level one before I lost interest. In between each official game are required training games. I aced the official games, as you can see below, and was left wondering where I stood out among all shortstop BARs. But I can’t locate my BAR, or level up. When I asked Socha about advancing to level two, he said 30 official games with a score of 850 or better is needed to move up. And maybe because I’m not a 7-year-old boy anymore, and therefore the game wasn’t designed for a 30-something trying to prove himself as shortstop that could’ve been,  I’ve lost interest.

At shortstop on level one, the only real options to throw to are first base or second base. I learned to watch for runners at first, no matter the outs, and throw to second. If no one was on first, always throw to first, because my decision to throw home with a runner at third and less than two outs always resulted in an incorrect answer — likely because I didn’t know the score or if my shortstop was playing back or in at the grass.

I’m interested in the depth of the app as players continue to level up. Socha said there are leader boards and plans for contests. And if I had an ounce of perseverance in me, maybe I’d keep playing to see if I could school all those kid shortstops across the country for top BAR. The app is worthwhile to train baseball players on the fundamentals on where to throw the ball. However, it’d provide a better value if it expanded to include more complex scenarios, such as bunt defense or base running. There are other mental aspects to the game besides where to throw on defense.

The app is free for Android and iOS devices, however the free version only offers training exercises on level one. To jump further in to the experience, a premium membership is required, which costs $10 a month, or $100 for a one year subscription.

In case you weren’t already aware, the Associated Press has real, human journalists. You’ve read those AP stories on your go-to sports news site. They’re usually results of a yacht race, highlighting a badminton tournament in another country, or a WNBA game story. They are the wire service stories that ESPN, CBS Sports or FOX Sports use because they don’t want to pay a staffer to write about the sports that don’t draw in enough clicks. They’re typically straight forward, succinctly written and dull. And those stories are written by flesh and blood — until now.

According to an article at The Huffington Post, the AP announced Wednesday that it will team up with a technology company to create automated game stories from NCAA college sports based simply on statistics. Starting this spring with Division I baseball, instead of a human writing straight forward, succinctly-written, dull stories, robots will now write straight forward, succinctly- written, dull stories. The AP robots will also cover D-1 woman’s basketball and division II and III men’s basketball and football.

Lou Ferrara, the vice president and managing editor at the AP, told Huff that once a game is over, its robot will spit out a story onto AP wires and NCAA web sites.

“At AP, we have been looking at automation with anything involving data, as we did with corporate earnings reports,” Ferrara said. “Sports have been in our DNA for a long time and automation for certain sports seems like a logical move, particularly for sports not receiving much widespread coverage yet in demand in certain markets.”

The AP has produced robot writing before. It teamed up with Automated Insights initially to draft quarterly earnings reports for its business section, which surged reports from 300 up to 3,000 each quarter. Three thousand straight forward, succinctly written, dull stories.

Philana Patterson, an assistant business editor at the AP, told The Verge earlier in the year that the system is producing less errors than the humans the news company employs. The humans it pays thousands of dollars a year to, along with full benefits, vacation and two weeks during March Madness that absolutely nothing gets done.

Which brings us to TechGraphs. David Temple, our esteemed managing editor, *must* be drooling at the thought of a soccer piece that doesn’t refer to the sport as football. Imagine how much more time he could devote to his wife’s roller derby team when he’s not spending thirty minutes cleaning up our typos or correcting our run-on sentences.

And no, TechGraphs readers, Michael Tunney is not a robot cloaked with a human byline. He’s indeed a real staff writer who just happens to excel  at cranking out info-filled pieces with a fantastic ability to write tightly.

In addition to Temple, fellow writer Bradley Woodrum benefits the most from his future colleagues. Woodrum’s history with robot dogs, robot turtles and drones reflects an adoration and healthy fear of the unavoidable robot revolution. And really, the robots can’t write a first-person piece about consuming a liquid meal. So I’m sure they’ll keep Bradley around for that.

Until the robots arrive, we’ll keep churning out error-laden sports tech stories at a human pace. Enjoy us while we last.

(Image via Mirko Tobias Schafer)

Last week ESPN relaunched its app, now self titled after ditching the Sports Center name, while USA TODAY introduced a sports app any serious sports fan will want to add to their library. The former features rebranding with some tighter design, along with the first iPad app, but USA TODAY’s spotlights innovations in the form of hot game alerts and a self proclaimed “Best. Scoreboard.Ever.”

Let’s start with the old but new. At first glance, ESPN (which only has updated the iOS version) offers a very similar user experience. My settings translated smoothly with the update. When I receive news alerts, it’s still accompanied by the infamous SportsCenter jingle. But there’s a bigger picture, which ESPN recently explained to The Verge. Along with an updated phone app and its first iPad app, ESPN will launch a major redesign on April 1, the website’s 20^th anniversary. John Kosner, executive vice president of digital for ESPN, told The Verge the goal is to create an experience across all platforms that is “fundamentally similar in terms of the look and feel.”

ESPN added a “Now” column, a Twitter-esque scroll of news nuggets, reporter Tweets, images and videos chosen by the editorial staff to enhance the scores and news featured by the app – and not bog it down with redundancy.

Want to watch a game after scrolling through scores? Tap it and the WatchESPN app opens automatically.

For Android users, ESPN said it is still working on that platform and did not offer an estimated relaunch date other than “weeks or months to come.”

Meanwhile, the USA TODAY Sports app is available for iOS and Android. And it has some fun features that ESPN’s offering does not. The hot game alert feature, which can be toggled on or off in the settings, blasts in-progress notifications so users won’t miss those can’t-miss moments.

“Consumers have so many options for news and information, yet so few of them solve a fan’s most basic problem: What do I need to know right now so I don’t miss out on what everyone else is talking about, or will be talking about?” said Mark Pesavento, vice president of digital strategy for USA TODAY Sports in a press release.

Tim Gardner is the director of digital programming for USA Today. The editorial team, which works around the clock, falls under his watch, and is responsible for monitoring games and triggering the hot game alerts.

“If it’s Old Dominion and George Mason and they’re heading to double overtime, we’re going to alert you on that as well,” Gardner told NiemanLab.

And then there’s the Best.Scoreboard.Ever. That same editorial staff lists the most important games of the day. Tonight’s top option is North Carolina (16) at Duke (5). Since it’s not yet March, I haven’t paid attention to college hoops one bit. I had no idea the legendary rivalry kicked off its 2015 campaign tonight. And since I already watched this week’s Better Call Saul, maybe I’ll catch a bit of the game. Or at least wait for a hot game alert notify me when it’s late in the second half.

At the bottom of scoreboard it identifies, with photo and Twitter handle, the editor on duty. Poor Evan Hilbert. He’s going to read some harsh tweets tomorrow morning when I realize he didn’t send one hot game alert and I missed the entire Tarheels/Blue Devils slugfest after I fell asleep on the couch.

The app filters news and scores by sport, too, so you’re not just stuck on Evan’s decision making. But compared to ESPN’s app, USA TODAY Sports is pared down. And that’s on purpose. This is for mobile use only. USA TODAY isn’t the multimedia behemoth that ESPN is. It doesn’t need to synergize apps and web and video. Its goal is simple with the app – to fulfill a niche. A niche for the itch of the can’t-miss-moments sports fan.