It is no longer a question of “do you like computer games and esports” but now “which game is your favorite?” The latest Global Web Index report shows 48% of internet users in the United States play a game on their computer (in this context Macs and Linux devices are included with Windows).

One of the more encouraging signs of growth isn’t in the sheer numbers, but the demographic of the players. It should come as no surprise to see the 25 to 34 and 16 to 24 age groups leading the way at 54% and 52% respectively, however even the more middle aged 35 to 44 bracket plays games at a high frequency of 48%. Across the age boundaries there is a nearly even money chance that both men, 48%, or women, 47%, play a game online or competitively at least once per month as well.

The surveyed group did not need to specify which specific games were played, but Twitch.TV released their January streaming info and serves well as a best-guess proxy on the GWI group. The top three most played — and viewed — games are titans of the esports realm, with League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive standing in order atop the podium. Five of the top 10 highest viewed titles are exclusive to PC’s. When a CS:GO tournament can draw over 1 million simultaneous viewers, big entertainment money follows big entertainment numbers.

With the biggest prize pools, sponsorship and biggest infrastructure involvement, it isn’t just the nerds taking note. Other entertainment mediums have been sponsoring esports related events. From the StarCraft II Ender’s Game on Blu-Ray tournament last year to the Chappie Challenge tournament playing Evolve this earlier month, to the million dollar perfect game MLB 2k11, the intersection of esports — in particular PC games — and entertainment is at a level never before seen.

(Header image via GWI)

It’s Baseball Week at TechGraphs. Our writers are sharing the tools they use to follow along in the season. Michael Tunney’s thoughts are below.

For the average baseball fan, an MLB.TV subscription that costs over $100 per season probably seems like an overpriced luxury. But for baseball fanatics, procuring an MLB.TV subscription is a fait accompli, an annual rite of passage. My reasons for not doing so are twofold: 1. the price point and 2. an intense fear that all of my worldly obligations will be thrown to the wind upon receipt of said subscription.

Instead, I have collected a number of means by which I am able to keep up with all the games without throwing my life away in the pursuit of watching all of the baseball things.

First, I use the MLB At Bat app to keep up with individual games, watch highlights, and subject myself to terrible White Sox broadcasts with Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson because I hate myself. I’ve made it clear, repeatedly, on TechGraphs that I’m a fan of Bob Bowman’s efforts with MLB Advanced Media, and find this app gives me 80 percent of what I need to follow any particular game.

For $20 you get a whole season’s worth of radio broadcasts for all 30 teams, Pitch f/x, in-game video highlights, and MLB.TV’s Game of the Day. Instead of listening to tunes or podcasts during the season I usually listen to radio broadcasts of whatever game interests me at the moment, whether it’s a good matchup or one of my fantasy pitchers are on the bump.

Second, Twitter. Not just any kind of Twitter, “baseball Twitter.” I use it to follow all the latest news and deals, and  keep up with injury updates and roster moves. I went through all of my follows and made a baseball Twitter list you can follow here. If you have any suggestion please add them in comments! One of my favorites for keeping up with the annual fantasy closer carousel is @closernews. I don’t know who maintains this feed or why, but I am eternally grateful and it’s one of the reasons I always finish near the top of my fantasy league in saves.

I only participate in one longstanding fantasy league because life, so I’m always checking in on Yahoo’s Fantasy Sports site, as well as their Yahoo! Fantasy Sports app, which can be maddening at times (I missed a Drew Hutchison quality start on Opening Day because it didn’t show he was starting when I checked, but also because I’m an idiot).

I also check Rotographs and Razzball on a regular basis, as well as Buster Olney and Keith Law’s blogs via ESPN Insider. Buster gives a daily rundown of everything that happened in baseball the day before, which I scroll through every morning to check for news on my fantasy team and to stay in the loop in general.

All this baseball buffoonery was put to the test this week as I was on the road, pretending to work in a Santa Monica cafe on Opening Day, and I was able to keep up with everything I needed by toggling between the MLB At Bat app, Twitter, and FanGraphs’ live chat throughout the day. If any readers have suggestions for ways to follow baseball without MLB.TV (or an actual TV) please add them in the comments, along with the best baseball Twitter follows!

(Image via Tony)

It’s Baseball Week on TechGraphs. Our writers have been describing tools they use to keep up with the baseball season. Bryan Cole’s is below.

Look, I get it. Technology makes baseball better. There’s no question. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that being able to flip between any MLB game happening live anywhere around the world*, with a little pull-up menu that instantly that shows how your fantasy teams are doing isn’t amazing. It is.

* – Certain blackout restrictions apply.

If you wanted to follow the 1912 World Series, here’s what you did: you went down to the newspaper office and you stood outside and you watched an electronic scoreboard with mechanical players that operators updated every time they got a telegraph from the stadium. This sounds like an “uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow” style exaggeration, but this really happened. Some people paid as much as 50 cents — the same price as a bleacher seat at the actual Series! — to watch these scoreboards.

Still, baseball is one big nostalgia trip for me: listening to the game on the radio, scoring the game on paper, saving ticket stubs to commemorate the games you went to. But there are still ways to bring some of these parts of the experience into the 21st century.

Radio Broadcasts

We’ll get the easy one out of the way first. An MLB.tv subscription of course includes the home and away audio broadcasts of all games, and you can get an audio-only subscription for just $20 all season. If you speak Spanish (or want to learn the extremely hard way), those broadcasts are available too. If you want still more people talking about baseball, there are a number of baseball-centric podcasts* that go incredibly deep on virtually every aspect of the game.

* – I’ve been looking for a daily baseball podcast on the level of The Basketball Jones for a couple years now, but I still haven’t found anything quite like that.

Keeping Score

Baseball Reference is a thing of wonder. Your dad can start reminiscing about this time he saw Yaz play a doubleheader against the Senators when he was in elementary school and boom, you can tell him who the winning pitchers were before he gets to the part where their car overheated in traffic on the way home.

Before then, the only way to get those details was to keep score with paper and pencil (or a pen, if you felt confident). There are a number of different scorekeeping guides and books, with varying levels of complexity. If you want to just mark down whether a player reached base safely or not, that’s fine. If you want to track balls and strikes, cool. If you want to try to indicate where the ball was hit on that tiny little diamond they give you, go for it.

My only advice is to get one that’s wider than it is tall. Most of the books available in sporting goods stores are designed for Little League coaches, so they have something like 16 lineup slots and only nine innings. But if you happen to be scoring an extra-inning game, your choices are either (a) stop keeping score at the most interesting part, or (b) copy all of the lineup information over again only to have the lead-off hitter hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 10th.

Obviously you don’t have to do this to enjoy a baseball game. At the professional level, you don’t even have to do this if you want to see how your favorite player is doing, since it’s usually a couple of smartphone clicks away. But it does give you something tangible to remind you of the game you went to and that, yes, Dad, Tim Wakefield did give up six homers in that game.

Paper Tickets

The ticket stub is a built-in souvenir, a reminder of the specific game you went to (so you can look it up later on Baseball-Reference). And recent tickets — the ones with photos on the front — tell you even more: a generic shot of the stadium or fans cheering tells you that team probably wasn’t very good. But teams have stopped mailing out those admittedly easy-to-lose pieces of paper, instead sending a PDF fans can print at home. And that’s great, and they’re actually really convenient if you’re meeting up with people, but no one’s going to pay for a super-sized PDF printout to hang on their wall.

For once, technology actually offers ways to counter this. Apple’s Passbook can be used in a number of MLB parks and lets you hang on to past tickets, meaning you can actually take your collection with you. Then again, when you think about the phone you were using ten years ago, you realize these digital tickets might not be with you for as long as you’d think.

The fundamental language of baseball is one of tradition, of grizzled scouts and outdated equipment and 60-year-old men wearing uniforms and suboptimal strategies because That’s How It’s Always Been Done. It’s ridiculous, sure, but if you squint (or if your vision is going), you can convince yourself that Ted Williams and Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax could actually still survive in this game, giving it a link to the past none of the other sports really enjoy. In a few minutes, the nostalgia will pass, and I’ll be back to looking at StatCast data while watching two games at once.

Until then, get off my lawn. I just found the tickets from that road trip I took to see Pedro Martinez pitch against the Braves in Shea Stadium.

(Photo by Scott A. Thornbloom/U.S. Navy)

While some were crying out for further action on the pace-of-play front, Major League Baseball was busy setting a series of viewership, attendance and app download records. Between press releases from various clubs as well as MLB themselves, baseball’s popularity may not be waning afterall.

Baseball as a whole appears to be in a strong place as before the regular season started, spring training attendance eclipsed the four million mark, setting a new record. Leading up to the games that matter saw seamheads pass the five million download mark across all platforms for the MLB At-Bat in the preseason. That is roughly the equivalent of the combined population of Los Angeles and San Diego downloading the app prior to the first pitch on Sunday night. The Advanced Media portion of MLB — those in charge of the MLB At-Bat app — claim users were up 30% during spring training compared to last year.

As games across the country kicked off, baseball enjoyed more success as MLBAM set another record with 60 million fans turning into games either live, via video-on-demand system. If the preseason 5 million download mark is impressive, Monday saw the At-Bat app accessed an incredible 9.1 million times, crushing the previous single day record by 40%.

Individual teams partook in the record setting celebrations as the reigning American League champion Kansas City Royals reported a record 11.7 local TV rating for their home opener. That is compared to last year’s KC home opener rated at 6.2, however, that came as their fourth scheduled game of the season and was following a rain out and an 0-2 start. Following a flurry of trades and signings, the San Diego Padres and their fanbase entered the 2015 season with much hope. That hope translated to a 34% increase in television ratings for their home opener over last year. Of course all TV ratings must be taken with a grain of salt as those figures do not include the previously mentioned millions of fans streaming games.

Major League Baseball certainly isn’t perfect — instant replay, concussion issues and blackout policies immediately come to mind — but it is clear the sky isn’t falling just yet either.

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.

I pay anywhere from $100 to $150 every season for the ability to watch every Cubs and Rays game I can. In the olden days, I would have paid a cable company for that service. But I’m as up-to-date as Kansas City, so I haven’t paid for cable, actually, ever in my life.

I love both of these things: MLB.tv and the MLB At Bat app for my Nexus 5. The former allowed me to watch my precious Devil Rays get whollapped while I was an intern in Hong Kong back in 2007. I’d wake up every morning, take the thirty minute bus ride to work, finish my day’s worth of work in 15 minutes, and then watch the previous night’s Devil Rays (which, at 9:30 in the morning had just finished) on my Dell Inspiron laptop (peace be upon it).

Since then, MLB At Bat has allowed me to watch Cubs games on the bus or in a car trip (given I have enough signal). I watch until I get carsick, and then I watch a few more minutes. At Bat also lets me listen to games at work. No, curious officemates, I’m not actually listening to Hall and Oates as you suspect, but actually Vin Scully. Put that biz on repeat.

But there are some problems. Some fixable problems. And some questions. As a loyal, paying customer, I demand answers.

1. End the Blackouts. This one is obvious. Everyone hates the blackouts. They were designed back when stadiums were all built out of wood and the television was this snazzy and expensive device that was going to destroy radio and real life forever. Now that we’re blaming smart phones for destroying the television and real life forever, maybe we can lighten these blackout rules?
2. End the Radio Delay. This one is less obvious, but equally outside of the purview of the people who run the actual coding behind MLB.tv and MLB At Bat. Still, it’s dumb as all get out and primed for the garbage heap. Sometimes, I am forced to listen to, say, an ESPN broadcast or the White Sox play-by-play team because the Rays aren’t broadcasting the game. Instead of muting my TV and listening to the fine commentary from WDAE, I have to listen to what amounts to a chlorine gas for my brain. It becomes very difficult to watch the game when I have to scream into my pillow after every Hawk Harrelson comment.
3. AT BAT NEEDS A FAST FORWARD BUTTON. I am watching a Cubs game from last night. The Len Kasper gives a great intro, talks about the previous game, and then send it to commercial. Then my precious little phone has to stream five minutes of “COMMERCIAL BREAK IN PROGRESS”. How many hours have I wasted watching those shadows shift and move along that metallic backdrop? A “Back 30 Seconds” button is the easiest, most obvious feature for a mobile video streamer. Netflix has it. Hulu has it. And MLB.tv used to have it. And unlike Netflix or Hulu, MLB.tv has long empty spaces, so it needs a “Forward 30 Seconds” button too. Yeah, the condensed games are nice, but I want to hear Len’s insights; I want to see the graphics and get the reports on the opposing teams; I want to experience the whole game — preferably without the battery-draining wastelands that are the whitewashed commercial breaks.



4. Is MLB At Bat opening really slowly for anyone else? In the latest update, I find myself sitting in front of the little spinning loading icon for at least five minutes every time I open the app. I never had this issue with previous versions. If a game has just started, this can prove very frustrating. All I want is the PITCHf/x report on that last pitch. Please just finish loading!
5. Why is Classic Gameday still the only way to look at previous at bats? I am thankful the developers have left Classic Gameday available to those of who care about history or posterity or what happened five seconds ago, but it would be nice if MLB At Bat or the newest in-browser Gameday actually had that basic, essential feature of the old Gameday. How am I supposed to tweet about the ridiculous Sam Fuld triple if the zone is already showing the next hitter?



6. Random Disconnections. I know others have to be suffering from this. I have had this problem for about five years, spanning two states, three cities, eight different residences, and at least four different internet service providers. (I honestly don’t remember it happening in China, so go figure.) I’m watching a replay of a game on MLB.tv, and then everything freezes. I have to quickly look at the progress bar and memorize my place in it because I know what’s about to happen: The game is about to start over at the beginning. It’s like as soon as my bandwidth gets choppy, MLB.tv pisses its pants and forgets its middle name. I think the problem correlates with MLB NexDef (I don’t remember having this problem before NexDef, even they’re even still using it) and iffy internet speed, but since I stream Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go and Amazon Prime without the shadow of a problem, I have to believe something at MLB.tv is just playing stupid.



7. DON’T SHOW ME THE SCOR– too late :(. Ah, the tedious, beautiful art of opening MLB.tv and not seeing the score of the replay you’re about to watch. I’ve tried squinting until my vision was too blurry to detect anything but shapes and colors. I’ve tried covering part of the screen with my hand and carefully navigating to the replays, sometimes by muscle memory alone. I’ve even asked others to start the replay for me so that I don’t have to risk seeing even a headline related to the game. This is no longer an issue with MLB.tv. This is specifically an At Bat problem. Do I have to make the Miami Marlins my favorite team just to be sure I won’t see any meaningful scores?! Why can’t I set my landing page to a score-free mode or a day-delayed mode? Or, better yet, just make my landing page the video feed selection. I can then navigate back to my team’s news feed if I’m still operating in normal earth time.

This is all very whiny. And it’s pretty much a shimmering monument to First World Problems, but these are issues real enough to me. Partly because I write about baseball, and therefore have to consume a lot of baseball, and therefore use MLB.tv and MLB At Bat daily. But it’s partly because I’m a fan. So I’m hoping others out there will agree with me.

All told, I love MLB.tv and At Bat. They bring baseball into the 21st century and have enabled my fandom, starting way back in 2007 when I was just a punk college kid sad about leaving behind his 10-inch dorm room TV. And I fully expect MLB will continue to improve these products. But a little complaining here and there can sometimes help.

All of us here at TechGraphs are baseball nerds at heart, but at least one humble editor is also a bit of a links-head. Is that a real term? Certainly not. But while Opening Week captures the hearts and minds of most, let us not forget about the tradition of the Masters. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s a tradition unlike any other. The first golf major of the year begins this week, and while I certainly am not qualified to give you a preview in the terms of actual competition, I can at least tell you how you can watch the dang thing. I will do so below.

Though streaming sports on the web can be a bit of a pain, it’s actually pretty straight forward with the Masters. You basically have three options:

TV

If you’re not planning to leave the couch, you can catch competition on ESPN Thursday and Friday, and CBS on Saturday and Sunday. The Par 3 Contest can also be caught on ESPN on Wednesday.

Your Computer

Starting Thursday, you can follow along online at Masters.com. You will have access to multiple feeds from the driving range, to featured groups, to Amen Corner. It does not appear that the straight-up ESPN broadcast will be available through Masters.com nor WatchESPN, but the other feeds should tide you over while you’re at work. The weekend CBS feed will be mirrored online if you’re big into Jim Nantz whispers.

Note: It does now appear that you can watch the ESPN feed through WatchESPN.

Your Phone/Tablet

The Masters has an app for both iOS and Android. The apps mirror much of the same functionality as the standard site plus a few bells and whistles like shot tracking, course overviews, and an audio-only feed. You can apparently stream the ESPN feed on Thursday and Friday, but only on the iPad, which seems strange. The CBS feeds can be accessed on either platform, and the alternate feeds should be available for the whole event.

I won’t bore you with all the broadcast times, but you can find them here should you desire. Now you can watch a little golf while sitting in the bleachers of a baseball game. Spring is here, everyone. Enjoy.

(Header image via Dan Perry)

The above image is a mock-up of what I would look like as a member of the Houston Astros. It comes courtesy of the folks at 3DPlusMe, a Utah-based company that specializes in converting facial scans to 3D-printed models. 3DPlusMe had a booth in Salt River Flats during Spring Training this year, and my boss David Appelman pointed it out while we were attending a game during our yearly FanGraphs trip to Arizona.

The booth was a fairly simple setup. On one side, there was a tablet PC that allowed the representative to help a user customize their creation. The other side featured a chair positioned in front of a camera and a customized Microsoft Kinect setup. I sat in the chair and stared a small video screen (to promote zero head movement), the Kinect moved 180 degrees from my left ear to my right to scan my handsome features. The total time from scan to conversion was fairly short, and I was customizing my player in a matter of minutes.

You may have seen 3DPlusMe in the news before, as they offer a similar product featuring Marvel, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter characters. They received some press at last year’s ComicCon.

Once the scan is done, the customer can pick their favorite team and see their likeness dressed in full team garb. They are then given as special code to use on 3DPlusMe’s web site to order a figure of themselves.

Yes, I am actually this muscular.

Cydni Tetro, CEO of 3DPlusMe, said that they have licenses with both MLS and MLB, and debuted their MLB booth at the All-Star Game last year in Minneapolis. They also had a presence at the World Series in San Francisco and Kansas City. Tetro did say that there are plans to be in more parks in 2015, though she couldn’t comment on anything definite when we spoke.

Beside ballparks, 3DPlusMe booths can be found in select Walmart stores, as well as FAO Schwartz and the Times Square Toys ‘R Us in New York. Tetro told me that while focus was geared toward fantasy/sci-fi products in the past, 2015 will be the year a big push is made in the sports market.

While I haven’t seen an actual model, the renderings look pretty dang accurate. Teams should think about using 3DPlusMe for their bobblehead giveaways, and save us the emotional scarring of what is offered now.

Would I buy one of these things? Of course not. But these products are most certainly geared toward children, not cynical 30-somethings. Also, a 3D-printed version of myself as Iron Man would be my wife’s first and only entry into evidence during our divorce proceedings.

3D printing is still a relatively new technology, at least as far as the consumer-grade segment goes. 3DPlusMe hasn’t even been in business three years yet, and they’re already making waves in the sports and entertainment industry. I’m sure personalized doppelgangers are just the first step. I won’t get a 3D model of myself as an Astro, but if 3DPlusMe or one of their competitors got in the miniature ballpark printing game, I might just cut them a blank check.

To celebrate the return of baseball, all this week TechGraph writers will be highlighting their favorite apps, tools, tricks, and more related to our national pastime.

I feel as though I’ve reached the critical mass of baseball fandom. Watching a game on TV — or more accurately via my computer and casted to my TV — isn’t enough anymore. I fully recognized I’m in the minority of what I want out of a baseball broadcast, which is about the nicest way of saying I like the nerd statistics. The perpetually running hamster wheel that is my brain tends to require additional numbers and context when a broadcaster may casually mention what a hot start a player is off to. Or maybe something so extraordinary occurs that a GIF, picture or video must be captured. Thus, here is a list of the apps I find myself turning to when I feel the need to second screen while watching a game.

MLB.com At Bat
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way here. Why watch one game when you can watch four on one screen? Or, watch one game on TV, another on the laptop, with your tablet also running. To be fair, I’ve only been guilty of the triple screen a handful of times.

Twitter
Ain’t no party like a Twitter baseball party! From #WeirdBaseball to #HotTakes, the things baseball people are capable of making catch on is impressive. Sharing the good times and bad across thousands of miles add another level to the baseball viewing experience. I’d be hard pressed to find an app I use more frequently than Twitter while watching a game.

GifBoom
For those moments that have to be immortalized on the interwebs via GIF, GIFBoom, in my opinion, should be the go-to option for Android users. Since switching back to Android — and thus losing my beloved Echograph — GifBoom is a more than adequate replacement. Sporting a timer, a surprisingly solid zoom feature and the ability to convert existing video to GIF form, all for free, there isn’t much to disagree with.

Chromecast
Without this little HDMI dongle, my second screening would be a lot tougher. By pushing my MLB.TV to the television, I can use my laptop (or phone or tablet) for any number of other things. While Chromecast does say it requires a universal plug-n-play router, you can get around that fairly easily.

Google Docs and Sheets
Me, a baseball nerd utilizes a ton of spreadsheets? Shocking, I know. I keep a table of starting pitchers, relief pitchers and position players. Add in historic top-50s and single season records, if I’m ever stranded in the middle of nowhere and my battery isn’t dead, I can find out who holds the single season record for HBP, I can. For what it’s worth, the answer is Hughie Jennings in 1896 with 51 times being plunked. On the documents side of things, I tend to make notes as the game progresses. Rather than maintain a traditional score book — or app equivalent — I use Docs to jot down in-game events I find interesting.

Shazam
I love walk-up music for hitters and entrance music for closers. The whole thing is so campy I can’t help but love it. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s tough to tell exactly which song is being played and thus, enter Shazam! It isn’t always perfect, but does the job well enough for me to keep it on my phone.

Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV is the longest running streaming sports platform of its kind. The mobile version, MLB At-Bat has been tasked with keeping up with new versions of Windows, Macs, and most types of mobile operating systems (sorry Windows Mobile users). It is no easy feat and MLB Advanced Media deserves some recognition. The streaming service has had its flaws, but MLBAM just sent out an update to their apps, including compatibility with the upcoming Apple Watch. Released yesterday, MLBAM was gracious enough to give a free two day trial on the Android, Fire OS, iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. No signup or auto-renewing fee, just a simple choice of which game(s) you’d like to watch.

The features new to this year’s version are things such as pre-game lineup notifications — strictly on the iPhone for now though — which is great for daily fantasy players, as well as a much needed revamp of the Android and Fire widgets. The full list of updates and additions can be found directly on the MLB website, however another feature worth highlighting is for 7-inch Android or Fire tablet owners being able to feature your favorite team. By selecting a specific club the app will showcase scores, news and video. If any of you are fans of multiple teams, the condensed game option is also available during the trial so you can catch up on each game’s signature events.

For those on the fence about purchasing MLB.TV for the first time — or even renewing it as last season there were major bugs early on — this is the perfect opportunity to preview the system at no charge. Each operating system’s apps are compatible with Google’s Chromecast,  Amazon’s FireTV and Fire Stick for straight forward broadcasts from your device to the television. With 24 games to choose from and zero sign up required, watching live baseball has never been easier.

(Header image via MLB)