Remember when it was only possible to follow your local team, and had to do so on the schedule imposed by your TV provider? Those days are quickly being consigned to the garbage-can of technological history, along with dial-up, typewriters and CD players. There's an ever-increasing range of options for the fan, regardless of location in the country or device - your TV, computer or even phone can be used to track the action, as it occurs. [Of course, there's still the whole MLB blackouts thing, but that seems less likely to be going anywhere, in the wake of recent, very expensive deals between teams and cable provider]
The latest entrant in the field is MLB.com Full Sports on Yahoo! Sports. After the jump, we'll take a look at what it might offer the baseball fan.
If you want the high concept, think of it as an online version of the MLB Network's MLB Tonight Live: the aim is to bring the viewer the biggest moments from major league games, live (or at least, live-ish), all season long. It'll offer live look-ins to key plays and pivotal moments, in-progress video highlights, as well as statistical data and historical footage relevant to the day's action as it unfolds. Big plus: there's nothing to download or install, you just go to the site, and there it is. The coverage shifts from game to game, so you can experience the plays that matter from anywhere around the majors as they happen, along with scores, news, and live expert commentary
I've been watching it a little bit today, and it's almost hypnotic: certainly, a nice option for the casual fan, who just wants to keep abreast of general action. There are supposed to be a couple of features which I was not yet apparently able to see: whether that's an issue on my side, or they'll be bringing those on board down the line, I'm not sure. You can supposedly pause live action and rewind in real time to content from earlier in the video stream to catch up on prior plays of the day. There's also meant to an embedded Twitter feed for tracking MLB.com reporters, Yahoo! baseball reporters, and other analysts. Hopefully this'll be customizable to follow specific teams.
At this point, it's available for free on both PC and iOS from MLB.com and Yahoo! Sports.so don't miss a minute of the action. I think national productivity just took a significant hit. :)
Yahoo! Sports and MLB.com Full Count support SB Nation in the never-ending pursuit to know everything that’s going on in baseball—a quest that all-new MLB.com Full Count aims to help with live, pause-able, rewind-able video of the biggest plays from around the league, and the hottest news and freshest analysis. All for free. Sign up at yahoo.com/fullcount today!