iPods Becoming Entrenched In Major League Baseball

DreadfulGrape writes "ESPN.com reports on how video iPods are being used increasingly by baseball players to study opponents' game footage. In fact, Houston Astros' pitcher Jason Jennings credits the device with improving his game last summer." Jennings says, "Eventually, more than two-thirds of the roster had piled on and turned this team into baseball's official iSquad. Every player gets his own custom set of videos loaded onto his personal iPod, sorted by date, hitter, pitcher and opponent — and updated every week or so."

yeah but

[battery111 (620778)]

I smell an opportunity for microsoft to tout their "squirt" feature on the zune to try to penetrate this segment.

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[owlnation (858981)]

Shame the Astros have more tasteful uniforms these days. The brown Zune could have co-ordinated very nicely with some of their 70's uniform disasters.

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[CptNerd (455084)]

Not to mention, the brown Zune won't show tobacco spit stains so easily.

You're out!

[Savage650 (654684)]

I smell an opportunity for microsoft to tout their "squirt" feature on the zune to try to penetrate this segment.

Says the Umpire: You're out! ... Spitballs [wikipedia.org] have been outlawed since 1921.

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[brunson (91995)]

How much do you want to bet they're all listening to "Centerfield" by Dire Straits?

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[UnknowingFool (672806)]

I hope you're kidding. On the Zune, for all media including non-DRMed media, the recipient can't play more than 3 times and the sender cannot send the same media again to the recipient. That's why the wireless feature has been called somewhat useless.

Great, I would imagine

[miyako (632510)]

I would imagine that this would be great not only to allow them to study up on opposing players tactics, but also to give them something entertaining to do while they are supposed to be playing baseball.

Queue Apple-bashers in 1...2...3

[coinreturn (617535)]

Queue up a thousand replies saying "Why are they using iPod? The is way better! Get a life, folks. Apple finally has marketshare of something. If the story was about Kleenex, would you complain that Scott Tissue was way better? Jeez.

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[fmobus (831767)]

Queue up a thousand replies saying "Why are they using iPod? The is way better! Get a life, folks. Apple finally has marketshare of something. If the story was about Kleenex, would you complain that Scott Tissue was way better? Jeez.

I guess you meant Cue [wikipedia.org], not queue [wikipedia.org]. Unless you wanted to queue Apple-bashers, but then you would have completely different thing [engadget.com]

Yours truly,
Grammar-Nazi Association of America

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[coinreturn (617535)]

I guess you meant Cue [wikipedia.org], not queue [wikipedia.org]. Unless you wanted to queue Apple-bashers, but then you would have completely different thing [engadget.com]

With all the thousands of Apple-bashers lining up with the same comment, I mean queue. It's called a pun [wikipedia.org].

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[mobby_6kl (668092)]

The only way ipods* are useful for baseball players is if they use them instead of baseballs.

There you go.

*- I'll capitalize the word properly when they come up with a proper name.

Yes!

[travdaddy (527149)]

Finally a useful application of iPods! What? Baseball? Oh.

Re:Yes!

[Lord_Slepnir (585350)]

I can think of another useful application of my old iPod (with a battery that barely lasts 15 minutes) and a professional baseball pitcher / batter, but i don't think it's aerodynamic enough.

And Fred Wilbon will scream about it.

[gelfling (6534)]

Because you know, it's not about the spirit of the game or whatever that's supposed to mean.

They'll have to upgrade to iPhones ASAP

[fang2415 (987165)]

I don't see what good a plain old iPod will do them. They won't even be able to connect to the spy satellites.

Oh yeah.

[Pojut (1027544)]

Because when I want to study the nuances of a batters stance or the way a baseman catches a ball and tries to sweep the sliding runner, I want to do it on a screen smaller than an asshole.

In related news,

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

A joint statement has been released by several hundred MLB players in which they profusely apologize to the public, as they've only just learned how tedious baseball is to watch.

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[cornjones (33009)]

oh my, too bad I am just out of mod points. that is one of my favorite recent posts.

9 - 13 is a turn around?

[pin_gween (870994)]

Only in baseball can you win 41% and call it a turn around.
The previous year he won 40%.

Wow, that's some turn around, ESPECIALLY since he was 16 - 8 four seasons ago.

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[LiquidFiend (1050386)]

http://www.ipodlinux.org/Main_Page [ipodlinux.org]

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[The Cydonian (603441)]

Neither ipod Linux nor Rockbox works with the second gen ipod nano. I love my 2nd gen ipod nano to death, but I'm bothered by three things:- a) there is no easy way of moving songs up and down in a playlist, b) Indic characters in a song's ID3 tags don't get displayed, and c) I'd like to be able to make simple apps for route-maps and such on my nano.

Normal users might not need power-tools, but I'm willing to go the extra mile and tinker with my nano. Things will be so much easier if there is an official AP

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[bad_fx (493443)]

I'm using rockbox on a 4G ipod and love it. I consider the display and UI to be far superior. The one thing that lets it down though is battery life; I've tried tweaking the settings to improve it, but still get dismal usage from the batteries. I would say it's less than 30% of the play time I got with the apple firmware.

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[TheVelvetFlamebait (986083)]

Jobs will never, ever let you use HIS hardware in any fashion that HE didn't think up first

While I'm no Apple fanboy by any measure, I still think your statement is completely unfair. What made the iPod so much more successful than the competition is the targeting of the non-techie. It's designed to put up all that red tape; it breads reliability and ease of use. The iPod is meant to be used for one purpose only, and believe me, it's not programming.

Just having the option gives the consumer an opportunity

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[virtualsobriety (1058474)]

This is not News and the iPods aren't nearly as popular as ESPN makes it seem. I know for a fact that only the small amount of teams who have digital video systems (Red Sox) have the means to convert and load all the Video. These Digital Video systems are not the standard accross the league and most players get video of their at bats/ pitching sequences on DVD for road trips. However, the popularity of iPods as music/video players among MLB teams can not be argued.

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[owlnation (858981)]

Wait a minute...

Isn't ESPN owned by Disney...

and isn't Steve Jobs and Disney...

A coincidence. Obviously.

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[hhawk (26580)]

What he needs to do is create a "new" model that is programable and has some different name. I'll explain why below..

But 1st..
A) he is a bit of a control freak
B) in the case of the iPod, the iTunes store connection, is both i) a key revenue stream and ii) the control of that connection is what encourged the record labels to sign up.
C) Of course you can program a Mac anyway you like

As a mass market product Apple (read: Jobs) not only wants to be in control of the product and any revenue streams coming out o

Yes you CAN program your iPod

[ChrisA90278 (905188)]

Want to re-program your iPod? It can be done. http://www.macworld.com/2005/05/secrets/julygeekfa ctor/index.php [macworld.com]

Usability?

[bill_mcgonigle (4333)]

This is nothing that you couldn't do with any portable media player

I agree with what much of what you say, and it's probably something that I could do with any portable media player, but, perhaps, Apple's investment in usability is what enables the 'dumb jock' to use portable video.

Before I got an iPod I had written up a set of perl scripts to manage my music on an Archos MP3 player to a level I felt was convenient. Now I use iTunes. Most folks can't write perl scripts.

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[EvilNTUser (573674)]

I'm sure usability is a big selling point, but I'm not sure the difference is that great. Perhaps someone can post about their experiences?

The article could actually have done just that. It did have one paragraph that mentioned competitors: "In fact, Jones says he has spent the winter demo-ing a portable media player by Archos, with a 4½-inch screen and greater file compatibility." Too bad it left it at that level, though. Unfortunately most people aren't going to read that far and never underst

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[Hijacked Public (999535)]

People don't understand the implications of compatibility because they don't have to. Jason Jennings doesn't recode the videos he watches on his iPod and neither do most people who watch videos on theirs. Jason and everyone else just plugs the iPod into the computer and lets it do its thing.

How on earth the guy can make out anything useful on the iPod's screen, from a downsampled video foibled around with to fit the screen, is beyond me.

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[bogjobber (880402)]

I know this is slashdot, but I'd be careful calling someone a dumb jock because just because they're a professional athlete. Most baseball players are actually quite capable. I've met Jason Jennings and he is a very intelligent person. Remember that they are watching thousands of hours of video so they can find subtle patterns they can use to exploit against an opponent (or remove from their own game). So, you're probably right that he can't right perl scripts but that hardly makes him stupid.

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[bill_mcgonigle (4333)]

Which is why I put it in quotes.

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[Joebert (946227)]

yet all we hear from the media is "iPod iPod iPod iPod".

By any chance, do you have 2 sisters, 3 brothers & a maid ?

Generic Connectors???

[brunes69 (86786)]

Airplane seats are already getting iPod connectors instead of generic connectors....

Maybe part of the problem is that the electronics industry still has their foot up their ass, and after 30+ years of portable media devices, there are still no standard connectors. Every device has it's own connector for charging (which is totally unnecessary today - a small connector that provided 5v and 1000 mv would be able to power almost all portable media devices).

And for the audio output, while most use the 1/8" phono plug, even this is non-standard, with some devices using the 1/16" plug, and phones all using totally different schemes for the four contact points in those plugs - meaningin you can't take a Morotola stereo headset and use it with a Treo and have both earphones work, even though they have the exact same form factor.

I don't blame the airline industries and auto industries for deciding to support only the iPod. It's kind of a "Hey asshats, if you're going to keep being retarded and uncooperative with eachother, then we will just support this guy who has 75% of the market anyway".

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[EvilNTUser (573674)]

I thought iPods can charge over USB? If another company doesn't support USB at all, they're dead anyway. As for video, any portable video player worth buying should support TV:s or monitors, so USB power + composite video or preferably VGA would solve all problems.

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[swb (14022)]

I'm pretty sure my 3G iPod will not charge on USB, only firewire. Maybe this changed in newer ones, but mine will only charge on firewire.

(There is a power brick-to-firewire adapter, so it doesn't have to be a firewire port on a computer, but no USB connection will work.)

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[TobyWong (168498)]

My 4G (grayscale) charges on USB so I would assume all of the newer models do as well.

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[doce (31638)]

The Video-enabled iPods (gen 5+) will charge over USB and FireWire, but will only sync with a computer over USB.

The 4G models did both over both.

The 3G models synced both, charged over FireWire.

The 1 and 2G models were FireWire only.

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[skiflyer (716312)]

Mine (5G) charges fine over USB... but it's the oh so uncommon 25pin USB cable... so if they want to provide a USB port, then I can bring my own cable, and we all win. But I think what's happening is they're providing the 25pin "dock" concept where you just push the iPod down onto the 25 pins.... kinda a silly approach since I'm pretty sure apple just started using it at 4G, and like you say, USB would basically cover everyone (Or at least give everyone a standard they can work with)... plus then I can char

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[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

But if you give them USB ports, then the more clueless of the bunch (eg, the majority) will start asking where the computer is, since you generally only have USB ports attached to a computer.

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[skiflyer (716312)]

And the more nefarious of the bunch will be secreting away all sorts of information from your connected devices to resell to the spammers!

Re:Generic Connectors??? Amps not Volts

[mkiwi (585287)]

Several people have replied to this comment, so let me play Engineering Nazi.

It's 5V and 1000mA. 1000mV is simply 1V- that's like saying you have a plug on the plane that has extra prongs for 5V and 1V applications.

Wanted to clear that up in case anyone was confused by it. We know what the parent meant, but some people replying to the parent certainly did not.

Yeah that was a typo.

[brunes69 (86786)]

I thought it'd be pretty obvious (why would I say both 5v and 1000 mv, which is 1v ?)

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[danpsmith (922127)]

I don't blame the airline industries and auto industries for deciding to support only the iPod. It's kind of a "Hey asshats, if you're going to keep being retarded and uncooperative with eachother, then we will just support this guy who has 75% of the market anyway".

Oh please, like you can't get a RCA out for just about every media player on the market including the iPod. If they didn't wanna be Apple shills they could've easily installed monitors with a set of RCA in ports and made everyone happy. They

Could you be any more alarmist?

[NDPTAL85 (260093)]

Saying the iPhone won't run your own software is a bit misleading. It WILL run 3rd party software, just software thats approved by Apple. That doesn't mean it won't run any 3rd party software at all. And for the overwhelming majority of consumers that will be far more than enough considering the high numbers of people with both Palm OS and Windows Mobile based smartphones who NEVER install programs of their own. I have a Treo with many installed programs but whenever I try to tell other Treo owners about th

Re:Time for the apple scale

[ffnogoodnik (812414)]

Ok, let me give this a try. It differs from using a phone with a camera because the picture quality is better and you can connect the iPod to a TV screen and still watch it without the picture looking like crap. It differs from using a real camera, something major league baseball has been doing for years, in that with the real camera will usually need you to be in a specific location like a film room to view it. The iPod would allow the players to view the film on the plane when they are travelling or in the hotel room.

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[chicagotypewriter (933271)]

What's there to know about a fielder ? I can see perhaps studying A-Rods play, but even that is debatable.

Nothing. Hitters are being watched for the most part. Even the center fielder, who if he chooses to watch film, is probably watching a hitter. They look for tendencies, how to get reads on a ball, what they will do in certain counts, etc.

The only players worth studying are Pitcher, First Baseman and Short-Stop. The rest are relatively straight-forward, and have very predictable responses - as would be

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[OldeTimeGeek (725417)]

Because they probably already have an iPod. They're just putting it to another use.

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[Brickwall (985910)]

Cricket - isn't that the game where, once everyone who's in is out, then the side that's out goes in?

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[Paradox (13555)]

Or maybe iPods are small high-capacity video players which are convenient to carry and to populate with video.

Does "Free iPod!" really sweeten the deal to someone who makes at least half a million dollars a season?