Baseball Players Hooked On Digital Video Libraries

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the everyone's-doing-it dept

With the recent release (and hype surrounding) Michael Lewis’ excellent new book Moneyball, there’s been a lot more focus on the “science” of baseball. One aspect of that is having better data on players. A few years back, there was a lot of news about how Curt Schilling toted around his laptop everywhere and would study tons of video on every batter he was going to face. That season, he dominated. Now, everyone in the major leagues is trying to make it easier than ever to get and study video. We had an article a few months back about how the Mets were using digital video archives, and now TechTV is running a similar article about how the Giants have come to rely on digital video as well, to the point where some think that players are spending too much time watching video, and not enough actual practice. The article also suggests that players can now “Google” a game – by searching through their at-bats. While it’s unclear if it’s the reporter or the players who are using the term “Google”, I wonder how upset it makes Google’s lawyers to see the term used in a way that has nothing to do with Google, itself…