Sports
Non-Existant MLB.tv Support
Shortly after I signed up for MLB.tv I realized I wanted the All Access package. I tried calling that day, but the offices were closed.
So on Monday I tried calling again and received a busy signal over and over again. I filled out the contact form on MLB.com. I hope it went through, but after I hit send the page just sorta refreshed. No confirmation message.
On Tuesday I received an email (two actually) with the subject “Information regarding your MLB Subscription”. It was a bulk email and had this lovely paragraph inside it:
RENEWALS: For your convenience, your 2007 MLB.TV subscription will automatically renew, without interruption, before the start of each subsequent MLB season at the rate then in effect unless you cancel your subscription by sending an email requesting cancellation to customerservice@... or by calling Customer Service at (866) 800-1275 before the first game of the applicable MLB regular season (subscriptions cannot be canceled, refunded, or credited (in part or in whole) after the season starts).
Great to know that the day after the season started.
I tried calling the number again. More busy signals until, finally, I get through! Awesome! Now I can change my subscription (hopefully). I figure at worst they will cancel my subscription and I just sign up all over for All Access. I’ll even do it reverse order if necessary. All I have to do is talk to somebody now. I’m on hold 10 minutes, then 20. 20 minutes turns into an hour. Then another hour goes by. Good thing I can work during this, huh? A third hour goes by and I barely notice the fourth. Five and a half hours go by and it’s time for me to leave the office. I hang up and go home. I’m not staying late to remain on hold.
I am absolutely shocked that I was on hold for five and a half hours. What sort of customer service allows this to happen? Where was the option to leave a message? Why wasn’t I ever given any sort of time estimate? What I heard was a random mix of music interrupted by this message every so often:
All agents are still assisting other customers. Please remain on the line and the next available representative will be with you shortly.
“Shortly” apparently equals more than five and a half hours according to MLB.com.
MLB Advanced Media is listed as being on 9th Avenue. I could have walked over there and settled this in a fraction of the time, but I’m assuming they don’t take walk-ins. Perhaps I could call up from my cell phone and put it on speaker and just sit in the office so they find out how their customers feel.
There are others going through something similar, so I know I’m not alone. Major League Baseball isn’t a BBB member, but there is a page on the BBB website for them if you’re interested.
As I wasn’t sure my first email, sent through the website, was actually delievered, I sent another using good ole fashioned “normal” email. I didn’t use the address above, as this was also in the bulk email I received from them:
Thank you for your order. If you have any questions about your order or about the MLB.TV subscription service, please contact the MLB.com Customer Service Team at Customerservice2@...
I used the “2” address as that segment was about support while the first seemed to be for cancellations. I’m sure they’re receiving many because they porn-website-scam-like automatically renew it every year. No option for you.
I’ve received no response yet. No auto-responder even. I’m extremely bitter. Obviously, I’m not in the mood to give my money to MLB right now, but the original reason I wanted this was to enjoy the product and I’d still like to do so… at least for now.
Tech • Sports • Baseball • 4 Comments • Permalink
MLB.TV Leaves Me Confused
Baseball’s a great game to focus on, or simply leave on in the background. Some like to work to music, as do I, but I like to have a game on in the background as well (when I can).
So I purchased a season pass from MLB.TV. My first complaint - right off the bat - the only subscriptions I could find, a monthly ($14.95) or season-long ($79.95) pass, are both automatic renewal subscriptions. They’re good about making it clear, but it’d be a hell of a lot nicer if that was an option.
So I start clicking around and test out a few streams. They look pretty nice. It looks like they’re using Windows Media version 9 and have a good 350k/sec feed (after initially buffering, I haven’t had it stutter again). I can use it in FireFox, which is nice too. CNN tells me I don’t have Windows Media 9, glad to see that’s not on my end. Hopefully the picture quality will continue once the season starts. I’m sure there’s less traffic on these preseason games. There’s a simple linescore next to the video. MLB.com has some nice gamecasts (they call it MLB Gameday, like the video game), why not have a miniversion of that next to the video, so I can easily go through stats from that game? I realize there could be some syncing issues, but if the data is available let’s get some in there, I don’t want to have to open yet another window (that might have to go over the video).
I decided to test out a radio feed and I see that’s a completely separate package. Another $14.95 for the season of radio. I thought perhaps they’d throw that into season TV passes, and if not, maybe there’d be a combo package option, even if it’s just a few bucks off.
Some might wonder why I’d want radio feeds since I already get the TV feed. The answer is just one of connection strength. If my connection goes to crap the radio stream has a much better chance of coming in clearly. I’m assuming it’s much less k/sec, if someone out there can let me know, that’d be great.
What they do have is a package called All Access. You get both TV and radio plus condensed games and searchable video. MLB.com advertises it as “The Best of Both Worlds”. The price is $99.95 - both worlds plus $5. I didn’t find this package until after my purchase, and I would have gotten it, because despite the fact that it’s not the best deal, I’m still after all access, I’m still after convenience. I’ll call support and see if they’re good about switching my plan. My recommendation is to list this on the page you land on after clicking the link titled “subscribe to live TV” on MLB.com’s home page. I’d think their most complete package would be listed everywhere.
Something else I’m completely confused about: local blackouts. What’s the point? Any feed I watched, I still saw commericals - is this really to protect local cable company (or sattelite company) subscriptions? Do they think they’re going to lose customers because I’m buying the MLB.TV package instead of basic cable (plus the sports network, if necessary)? What’s really ridiculous is there’s no override. You could purchase the highest possible cable package plus MLB Extra Innings (out of area games on TV) and it wouldn’t make a difference.
I still feel like they’re pushing this as some form of TV-alternative instead of something that could complement it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s just looking for a way to grab a game on the go or watch an at-bat when the TV is already being used. The Extra Innings package is currently $159 for the season. Why not have some real All-Access package, even if it’s just tacking on current online prices, where I could get MLB Extra Innings and the internet features and then give me access to local games online? Then they know no one’s “losing” my money and I’m finally getting closer to real all access.
MLB is coming out with mobile features soon. I’m curious as to how that will be priced and if it’ll be packaged with anything else.
Re-Established Importance
Headlining every sports site at some point today has been a story about Barry Bonds and steroids:
Juicy Details - ESPN
Book details slugger’s steroid use - Sportsline
Bonds bombshell: Book details slugger’s steroid use - CNNSI, as well as CNN.com
Carrying the AP story:
Book alleges extensive steroid use by Bonds - Fox Sports
Book details Barry Bonds’ doping program - TSN
Report: Bonds began using steroids, vast array of other drugs, in 1998 - Yahoo! Sports
Book gives dope on Bonds - Sportsnet
This will no doubt be the biggest story in the sports world for some time to come.
Is this shocking? If the story about Bonds is all true, or even partially true, not at all.
The story itself comes from an excerpt from “Game of Shadows,” which appears in the March 13 issue of Sports Illustrated. “Game of Shadows” is a book written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who have been following Bonds and the steroid scandal since day one.
What stands out to me is that Sports Illustrated has its name splattered across every major sports site in North America. This issue will sell, the book will sell. SI didn’t do this reporting, Fainaru-Wada and Williams did for their book, but SI will be printing some details first. SI will get attention, some attention it definitely needs in this web/mobile phone/ESPN sports world.
Will this just be a flash in sales for SI, or can SI leverage this situation into something more?
ESPN.com Changes Front Page
ESPN.com has changed the layout of their front page. The layout looks more like the insides pages of the site now with the horizontal menu (something I’m considering for my heavy content sites). The layout is now very similar to Sportsline and even major news sites like CNN.com.
Sportsline and TSN made layout changes over the summer.
ESPN’s new layout looks good. It’s less cluttered and easier to read in my opinion. I’m a little too tired to write up a big review, but I did just want to stop by and give a thumbs up.
I’m still not sure I’m going to visit it like I used to. The auto-playing of commercials on some of the inside sections (like the NHL) is something I despise. It’s not the video, although I’m not a fan of that either simply due to system resources and bandwidth - it’s the sound. I can’t visit these pages in an office and it’s just an annoyance at home when it’s unexpected. I have little doubt these ads pay a ton, but let me activate them on my own by actually wanting to watch videos that appear after the spot (a brief commercial beforehand is understood by me, I’m not an advertisement hater). User initiated playing would be very nice.
Another thing to note: ESPN.com went with an RSS/XML button (it used to be just XML). It’s orange and white and foreground/background flips for each abbreviation. I’m still waiting for the first major site to use the feed icon that FireFox uses and IE will be adding. They also have text RSS links above each news section on the front page.
Who Invented the Modern Baseball Bat?
David Pinto over at Baseball Musings gave me a pointer to this Jim Caple article about baseball bats.
Caple ordered replicas of bats originally made for Honus Wagner, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.
This part caught my eye:
There are two main things you notice when you pick up these bats. One, they’re big. The Ruth and Shoeless Joe bats are 36 inches long and weigh 38-40 ounces, depending on whose scale you trust. Next, with the exception of the Ruth bat, the handles are much thicker than modern bats. Scott Spiezio measured the Shoeless Joe bat against his own and found that Jackson’s handle was almost as thick as his is at the trademark. There are Hickory Farms beef sticks that are thinner. The Cobb and Wagner bats also have almost no knobs.
I was thinking none of the bats other than Ruth’s would have a knob. Multiple times I’ve heard Ruth is credited for inventing the modern bat - with a knob on the end.
Ruth played from 1914-1935. Shoeless Joe played from 1908-1920.
That’s a decent overlap for Jackson using a bat that Ruth supposedly brought to the scene, but some Google image seaching let me find this picture:
”Joe Showing Us How To Lay One Down”, dated 1912, from this page: Pictures of Shoeless Joe Jackson
That website even sells a replica of “Black Betsy”, Shoeless Joe’s bat. Louisville Slugger made three of them for Jackson back in 1915 according to the site, although Ruth’s career had started by then.
However - if there are early picture of Jackson with all his bats having knobs on them - why is Ruth given credit for making the modern bat? Was it also a skinnier handle?
I love reading about Ruth, I’m a fan like many others, just looking for some clarification here.
Continue reading "Who Invented the Modern Baseball Bat?"
Tommy Hates the Phillie Phanatic
Seriously, he really does. Too bad his players didn’t.
Sports Sites Revamp
Both CBS Sportsline and TSN have given their websites redesigns this week.
Sportsline has been given more of tweaking. A bit of a cleaner look overall, I definitely like it and think it’s easier to read. The front of the site has been designed for a 1024x768 layout. The rightside column doesn’t have too much sports-related content though. Mostly promos for CBS Sports TV, CBS News and CBS TV’s nightly schedule. The inside pages have the cleaner headers, but are still designed for 800x600 resolutions, however the expanded layout may still be coming, could just be a staggered rollout.
TSN was given more of a facelift. They also expanded the front page to cater to the 1024x768 audience and now there’s content everywhere. It’s a bit too crowded and even moreso on FireFox compared to IE (especially the menu). I can’t imagine they won’t fix that soon. There’s also a javascript error, but that looks like it’s due to one of their ad scripts. None of the other pages I visited seemed to be redone yet.
ESPN re-did their own site not too long ago, so I would expect it to be at least another year before another change is made.
Fox Sports and Sports Illustrated are still the only major sports sites that still have front pages that have designs catered to people using 800x600 resolution settings.
ISAPI Rewrite Convert for AllPosters.com PostersFeed
For quite some time I had a posters page on hockeyfights.com as an affiliate of allposters.com (affiliate link).
At first, I created a series of manual links from a text file they had. I downloaded preview images and the info needed, dumped some of it into a db and had a couple of pages.
It became a bit much to keep up with, so I stopped. I took a little piece of code from their affiliate website and just had an iframe that displayed a few top sellers that someone could scroll through. Not really ideal, but no work involved.
Eventually allposters.com released a datafeed. You download a series of files (text, csv or xml) and have all their store information. You can then easily dump it into a database (or use the files as they are if you like) and can build a relatively dynamic store from that. Images and such are all stored on their site and locations/names are referenced in the datafeed files. I wanted to do something with it, but never got around to it.
Semi-recently allposters.com released web services. Web services allow you to access all of their store info on their own machines. No more frequent manual updates. While I know I’d still have to update some code now and then, this was ideal and I wanted to take advantage of this to make a nice looking store front for my users.
Instead of building from the ground up I looked for an already built solution. I found a few ok ones and then I came upon PostersFeed XML by One Click Designs (demo store). It was neat and a good base for me to work with. I also liked that they offered Posters Feed Professional, which is the same script, but with a slight modification for mod_rewrite, allowing you to have cleaner urls (so besides looking nicer, they can be copy and pasted easier, and search engines will follow them easier). mod_rewrite is Apache web server-only. However, Helicon has made an alternative for us IIS users: ISAPI Rewrite. I use it a good deal already. I don’t run Wordpress anymore, but when I did I had a good set of rules that allowed me to do the same url rewrite as Apache users.
So with Posters Feed Professional and ISAPI Rewrite, and a few other conversions to the base script I was able to build a nice hockey posters store for hockeyfights.com. I’m not completely finished with it yet. I will probably add a few more “convenience” links on the right, along with replacing the ad up top with a posters ad (or perhaps a Google Adsense ad). I also plan on having posters come up on actual team and player pages when applicable. This is something that will require a bit more work, but should look pretty good when done (along with hopefully producing some nice conversion rates).
I’d love to post the code for the ISAPI Rewrite modification, but One Click Designs charges for the mod_rewrite tweaks (the base script is free, although they ask you sign up for the affiliate program through them so you would be a child affiliate of theirs at no cost to you). Because the ISAPI Rewrite script isn’t that different from it’s mod_rewrite counterpart I’d basically be giving their script away for free, which is something I obviously shouldn’t do. However, if you look at a few conversions (like the Wordpress one, or a few on Helicon’s forums), it shouldn’t be too hard for you to do the conversion yourself.
Here’s an allposters.com webmaster affiliate link, in case you’re looking to sign up as an allposters.com affiliate yourself.
Be Like Mike
Not Jordan, you’re never going to be like him. But Michael Vick? Maybe you could swing that.
To help get you started is the Ron Mexico Name Generator. Learn more about Ron Mexico.
Oh, I’m Buster Italy, in case the legend ever gets told to you.
Pushing Paid Content
If you head over to espn.com right now you’ll see lead stories of baseball streaks and slumps at the beginning of the season.
Out of the five stories contained in the main story area on the front page, four are accessible only to ESPN’s “in” members.
I think paid subscriptions is a good business model for many websites. For some sites it means no advertisements, for others it means premium content (a la espn.com). Either way, you’re usually diversifying revenue sources (generally, it means a site is not relying solely on ads). Slow sports news day or not, pushing your paid service by using the main content area such as this has to be as much of a turn-off to most of the audience as it is a turn-on to new members.
So is having however many new signups worth driving others away? For espn.com, I’d say the answer is most likely yes. Sports sites, and certainly ones like espn.com, can be extremely sticky. News sites in general have large return audiences and sports fans can be rabid. Chances are a one-day (or just a few hour) push to attract new paid members won’t do anything to traffic long-term. Sending some users to alternatives like Sportsline, Fox Sports or Sports Illustrated on a day where little is happening shouldn’t have any impact on tomorrow. However, if ESPN were to continue it’s push for a few consecutive days they might start to see a decline in traffic, at least for a brief period of time.