Tag: baseball

Categories
video games

People Make Games on Valve’s Gambling Problem

Valve has a gambling problem with loot boxes and items for sale on Steam. People Make Games has done an excellent job covering here in part one of this two part series interviewing the people suffering from gambling addiction due to the situation, experts on the subject, and people who worked for Valve.

As PMG discusses in the video, Valve partnered with a gambling site for their DOTA 2 competition The International which strikes me as something that is easier for them to be comfortable with when professional sports like Baseball are including gambling, scam crypto sponsors, and odds during games.

It is disgusting to watch gambling pervade and ruin every facet of modern entertainment. Not everything needs to be for profit and make money. Not everything needs to exploit someone to raise up a rarified few who are profiting on being the middlemen in the gambling ecosystem of pain.

Categories
baseball

Homer J. Simpson in the Baseball Hall of Fame

Major League Baseball inducted Homer into their Hall of Fame and commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Homer at the Bat episode, which is honestly one of the best episodes of any television program.

MLB’s Joe Posnanski reporting on the induction ceremony and quoting Al Jean, that episode’s executive producer:

When Bart and Lisa chant “Darryl, Darryl,” at Darryl Strawberry, their mother says they should stop because it’s mean. Lisa explains that as a professional athlete, such insults just roll off their backs. There is then a closeup of Strawberry, and a single tear falling from his eye.

“I didn’t know whether to tell Darryl we were going to do that,” Jean said. “I decided not to tell him.”

I still find myself singing the closing theme song:

 

Categories
apple sports

MLB At Bat 2009 Review (iPhone)

mlb-iphone-app

I’ve been listening to MLB.app since the start of the season and as rocky as it has been for the fighting phils, the app has been great.

It streams audio from the Phillies home radio station, even though I’m in San Francisco.

It plays highlight videos from mlb.tv.

It costs $10 per season, whereas the streaming audio feature from mlb.com costs $15.

Most importantly, it gives you a box score and play-by-play text.

Overall, I’ve had few issues with At Bat. Mainly, I’d appreciate it if there were full streaming video of the game, but I suspect they’ll do that for next season and charge $10-$20 more for the app.

The lesser issue is with my connectivity. I live in SF and AT&T’s network stinks, but the inability (on the part of the app or the iPhone) to switch between edge/3G while streaming the in-game audio is terrible. I have to wake my phone up just to get it to realize it should keep trying to get signal.

If you are usually in a wifi-zone like I am, though, you’ll be fine. We’re lucky to have At Bat on the iPhone and it is a steal at $9.99. As far as I know there are no blackouts for the radio stream.

Check out the gallery after the break for all the screens. Then go buy it from the app store.

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Categories
sports video games

MLB 2k9’s Tragically Funny Portrayal of Baseball

MLB 2k9 has any number of unfortunate issues, but I hadn’t seen them until now. It is especially sad to have them on a year when your main competition is The Show’s across-the-board critical success. Video (of some other hippie playing MLB 2k9) after the break.

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Categories
sports

Rest in Peace, Harry.

Rest in Peace, Harry.

Phils announcer Harry Kalas dies | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/13/2009.

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