Techdirt. Stories filed under "baseball"

2k Sports Fixes The MLB2K Baseball Contest It Previously Said Wasn't Broke

Timothy Geigner — Tue, 2 Apr 2013 15:07:53 PDT

If you're a fan of playing baseball the way its inventor intended, meaning on your couch in front of the television with a controller in your hand, you may recall our discussion last year around 2K Sports' famous Perfect Game Challenge. Should you not be familiar with it, that contest revolves around a competition between anyone who was able to pitch a perfect game in the MLB2K series (no hits, no walks, no errors in a complete game shutout by one pitcher) for various large cash prizes. Deadspin's Owen Good discovered an exploit in the system that allowed players to manually replace the starting lineups of the teams they were opposing, essentially rigging it to face the worst possible lineup for their pitching performance, and still have it be counted as a valid perfecto. He also outted at least one specific entrant into the subsequent playoff contest for the challenge that used that system. 2K Sports declined to do anything about it, saying instead:

"The contest was run properly," 2K Sports said. "We look forward to awarding someone a million dollars on May 10 in New York."

Utilizing the black magic called "reductive reasoning", I can only assume that that the company is deciding this year to actively make their annual contest improper. What else would one conclude, given that they have fixed the exploit? As Owen Good once more notes:

Today, I started a game under the Million Dollar Challenge menu option and as soon as I pressed start to go the substitution menu in the loading screen, I lost the official logo. According to the contest's official rules, you may not pause the game, substitute any player on either team, make a mound visit, or delay the game longer than 10 seconds between pitches.

I learned long ago that the greatest power you have when you make a mistake is to own it, fix it, and move on. 2K Sports appears to have skipped a step, which just makes them look proud and petty. Unfortunately for them, both the internet and baseball keep long memories.

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There's No IP In Team: How Protectionism Is Holding Back Sports Metrics (And Everything Else)

Timothy Geigner — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:02:01 PDT

If there is a single place where the sports and the geek worlds collide, it is undoubtedly in statistics. It's long been said that baseball is a thinking man's game, in part because of the chess game that is built into its very skeleton, but also because of the role that math and numbers play in terms of making decisions on each team based on individual situations. By this time, only those that work really hard at staying away from baseball will fail to recognize names like Bill James or Billy Beane. The people now most responsible for constructing teams and their strategies are people with advanced degrees in fields like economics and statistics. What's interesting is how quickly advanced metrics, or sabermetrics, have exploded in use and depth in the past ten years after being almost universally derided by the major league clubs. Advanced stats are everywhere in baseball now, from the early focus on OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging) to WAR (Wins Above Replacement) to WRC+ (Weighted Runs Created) and so on. What's amazing is how far behind other sports appear to be in developing their own advanced statistical systems. Take basketball, for instance. It would be very easy to conclude that there has been nothing resembling the development of baseball statistics in professional basketball, otherwise we'd have heard about it and the knowledge of it would have spread as wide as it has in baseball, right?

Well, no, actually, and the reason why is a lesson in how collaboration, open development, and building off of the ideas of others provides the most advanced outcome. Such is Jason Schwartz's conclusion in his lead up to the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where at least some discussion of basketball metrics is occurring. That conference, now an ESPN sponsored event, grew out of what was once a simple Yahoo message board started in 2001 by basketball stats geeks. Early on, as was the case with baseball metrics, the forum was open for discussion, peer review, and the exchange of ideas. Unlike baseball, however, the NBA knew all about Moneyball by 2003 and teams were extremely interested in the potential of advanced metrics.

The NBA establishment quickly took notice. [Dean] Oliver, who published the seminal Basketball on Paper in 2003, seven months after Moneyball hit stores, was hired full time by the Seattle Supersonics in 2004. Another frequenter of the board, John Hollinger, was hired the following year by ESPN - and recently became a vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies. Hollinger's ESPN gig was filled by Pelton, who, after making his name at Basketball Prospectus, did a consulting stint with the Indiana Pacers' front office. Roland Beech, who created the popular website 82 games, was hired by the Dallas Mavericks in 2009 as director of basketball analytics. (His boss, Mark Cuban, is regularly one of the biggest names at the Sloan conference.)

So you're probably thinking, "Great! The teams took notice in the early stages, unlike what happened in baseball, meaning that the knowledge was embraced!", right? Well, that's true, but the result was the severe retardation of growth in basketball statistics. Why? Well, if you know anything about how patents and intellectual property often function today, you've probably already guessed.

As soon as each statistician joined an NBA squad, sharing in public became off-limits-and so, gradually, the think tank closed shop. What were the teams paying for, after all, if their new stat gurus were just posting their ideas online for the other 29 franchises to read? This has had a paradoxical result: Because NBA teams embraced advanced stats so quickly, progress on basketball analytics has actually slowed down. The top minds are now all working in silos, not only unable to collaborate but actually competing against each other.

This is, again, the exact opposite of what occurred in baseball. For baseball statistics, because teams were not impressed by the idea of advanced metrics, favoring instead old-timey scouts on the ground, the best minds were free to collaborate with one another, forming what are now some of the most prestigious sports stats think tanks in history, like Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs.

Major League Baseball teams were hidebound enough to ignore Bill James and sabermetrics for a full quarter century-as a result, he and others hashed out ideas out in open, public forums. By the time MLB executives finally embraced advanced baseball statistics, the movement was fully formed.

If you want to draw the obvious analogy, baseball statistics were developed on an open source model, while basketball has mostly been proprietary. As Schwartz notes, it isn't necessarily a lack of knowledge that is the resulting problem, but rather the issue is that this knowledge is all segmented throughout individual teams and nobody has the collective manpower to use it to its full potential.

Many, including Oliver, believe the killer app is hiding in there somewhere. The challenge is that there's so much information, it's easy to get lost. "It's like saying you're going to Wal-Mart or Ikea to get something," offers Tommy Sheppard, the Washington Wizards vice president of basketball administration. "You better know what you want, or you're going to walk out with a ton of s***." That each franchise is working alone - and against each other - compounds the problem. Goldsberry describes it as 30 "micro-CIAs," all racing against each other to "procure actionable intelligence out of these haystacks of vast data."

Sound familiar? Now, here's where it gets really fun for the purposes of our analogy. The quality of team construction in baseball is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was 20 years ago, in massively large part because of the explosion of advanced statistics and the resulting understanding of the game. Think about that for a moment. Even as these teams compete with one another, because of this open source statistical model for knowledge of the game, every team is better off for it. The game has universally advanced. Basketball, however, under the proprietary model, has not. While there have been rule changes that have influenced how the game is played, player evaluation is still essentially the same game it was 20 years, or even 40 years ago -- and thus you still end up with teams that look good on paper based on the old stats, but fail to perform well as a team. Why? Well, perhaps because the best minds aren't collaborating to advance the game through knowledge, and thus they're measuring the wrong things (and optimizing for the wrong things as well).

Thinking of each league as a microcosm of society and industry, the implications for intellectual property in general, and patents in particular, are somewhat breathtaking.

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2K Sports Botches Their Perfect Game $1 Million Contest

Timothy Geigner — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:09:00 PDT

Ah, baseball. The national pasttime (for every month the NFL isn't playing) is rife with the most wonderful of traditions: Fenway's Green Monster, cheating, Wrigley's ivy, cheating, the divisional rivalries, cheating, the evil empire Yankees, and, of course, cheating.

Yes, it seems that for as long as baseball has been in existence, scandal has followed in its wake. We're finally beginning to emerge from the steroids era, but those of us that love the game are also familiar with the spitballs, corked bats, stolen signs, Pete Rose, and the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. And so it's perhaps with little surprise and a shrug of the shoulders that we receive news from Deadspin that at least one of this year's $1 Million dollar candidates of 2K Sports' MLB2K12 Perfect Game Challenge rigged things in his favor. And there may be more.

For those of you not familiar with the game or the promotion, for the past several years, 2K Sports has paid out $1 Million to the winner of their Perfect Game Challenge. If you can manage to pitch a perfect game against the computer opponent (no hits, walks, or errors in a complete game shutout), you're entered into their bracket to play against the other perfectos, culminating in a championship being awarded on Spike TV. It's a big deal, especially for a game franchise that basically has this contest going for it and nothing else. But, as Deadspin's Owen Good notes, there's a problem:

"Two days ago, I reported on an exploit within MLB 2K12's $1 Million Perfect Game Challenge, in which contestants in the qualifying round of the contest could substitute opposing batters before the game began and still throw an eligible perfect game. I reported very strong evidence indicating that one of the eight finalists 2K Sports is flying to New York this week used the exploit in pitching his perfect game. And that same person has said he believed others in the finalist pool used it too."

That player was William Haff, who insists that his perfect game is legitimate. Ah, it's so simple! Just sub out every good hitter on the other team before the game starts! Face nothing but .200 hitters and we're in the clear.

In the end, I don't know that I can put the blame for this on Haff or any of the other finalists who may have also used this exploit. The blame belongs on the game developers and the ones running the contest. The very idea that 2K Sports would have allowed this in their famous (now infamous?) contest surely caused the kind of stunned embarassement that would result in a heartfelt mea culpa, right? Especially since there was something like 900 other players that threw perfect games, most of which likely were far more legitimate than Haff's substitution-filled no-no. According to 2K Sports...not so much.

"The contest was run properly," 2K Sports said. "We look forward to awarding someone a million dollars on May 10 in New York."

In the end, I'll feel a bit bad for the honest gamers who threw a perfecto and won't get the chance at the money because of dubious actions such as those of William Haff. But mostly I'll chuckle at the fact that 2K Sports' game at least got one part of their baseball simulation correct: cheating. Haff used the exploit that 2K Sports allowed for and explained it away by pointing out there's no rule against it in the contest...much the same way as Jose Canseco could explain his steroid use in the 90's by saying Major League Baseball had no rules against it. And technically, both of them are right.

But they're also both wrong.

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DailyDirt: Open Source Robots

Michael Ho — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:00:00 PDT

Robots are getting better and better at performing simple repetitive tasks that most people think are fairly easy to perform. But if you're not paying attention to robot developments, you might have missed some robots that have been taught to do a few more impressive feats. Here are some examples of open source robots that we might want to keep an eye on.

An open source robot surgeon called Raven is making some impressive progress in the field of medicine. However, its advancements could be threatened by the makers of the da Vinci Surgical System -- and various patents on robot surgery procedures. [url]
PhillieBot is a one-armed robo-pitcher designed by engineers at Penn that threw a ceremonial opening pitch for an MLB game. The creators credit the open source robot operating system (ROS), but also admit that their robot won't be competing with human pitchers any time soon. [url]
In 2010, Willow Garage modified its open source PR2 robot to do a laundry task -- successfully folding towels neatly. The towels don't have to be a specific size or color, but it does take some patience to wait for a pile of towels to be completed. [url]
To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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DailyDirt: Build It And They Will Come...

Michael Ho — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST

Moneyball (the movie) has recently popularized the concept of sabermetrics, but for a while now, real sports fans (and mathletes) have been applying rigorous analysis to just about every sport. There still aren't any sure bets, but forecasting player performance has gotten a lot better in the last decade or so. Here are just a few examples of math geeks taking some shots at jocks.

Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame, Ed Weiland -- for being a bit less surprised than most about Linsanity. Weiland wrote in 2010: "... Jeremy Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star." [url]
Nate Silver called himself a forecaster, explained how he looked at baseball stats, and created the PECOTA system for evaluating MLB players. Baseball Prospectus bought the PECOTA system in 2003 and publishes its forecasts for all kinds of baseball fans and fantasy baseball leagues. [url]
The annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference has picked its top ten finalists for its Research Paper of the Year. These papers discuss various stats like "15% of basketball rebounds hit the floor before being collected." [url]
To find some other online challenges and games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Pixar Trademark Lawyers Being Kept Busy: Fighting Pixar Petroleum, While Being Fought By The Atlanta Braves Over 'Brave'

Mike Masnick — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:58:00 PST

It appears that Disney's Pixar division is engaged in two separate, but interesting, trademark battles (though the two are quite different). The first involves a Canadian oil company that decided to call its new division Pixar Petroleum. Turns out that Pixar isn't happy about that and is taking legal action. One of the points raised is that Pixar chief John Lasseter is a big proponent of alternative fuels and may not like any association with an oil company. Of course, that alone doesn't make for a reasonable trademark claim. In fact, I'm wondering if there is a reasonable trademark claim here at all. Trademarks cover the specific industries in which you use the mark in commerce, and despite movies like Cars, it seems like a pretty big reach to suggest that digital animation studio Pixar is in the same industry as oil producing Pixar. While it might cause a doubletake, I'm not sure that any of your traditional morons in a hurry would actually think that the characters from Toys were setting up oil refineries in Canada.

In this second dispute, Pixar finds itself on the other side of the coin. The major league baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, are apparently trying to dispute Pixar's attempt to register Brave as a trademark. Pixar wants the name because it's releasing a movie with that name. Of course, the baseball team doesn't actually hold a registered trademark on just "Brave." Instead its registered marks are on the plural version. This doesn't entirely exclude their protest, as they can argue a common law trademark or a likelihood of confusion.

Either way, I'm at a loss as to where the confusion would be here as well. I don't see anyone going to see the Pixar movie and then being disappointed that it wasn't a baseball game.

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NY Yankees: It's Insulting To Call Us The Evil Empire... But It's Also Trademark Infringement

Mike Masnick — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:57:45 PDT

Ah, the NY Yankees. I've mentioned in the past that I'm actually a big Yankees baseball fan (last night's loss sucked), but sometimes the team (like all of Major League Baseball) does stupid things with intellectual property law. The latest is a report that the team (and Major League Baseball) are trying to deny a trademark to a couple who is selling anti-Yankee gear (mainly to Red Sox fans) using the term "Evil Empire." The Yankees are, quite amazingly, suggesting that this infringes on their own trademarks, while at the same time claiming that "evil empire" reflects poorly on the team. This whole thing seems pretty crazy. As the Deadspin article linked above notes, "Evil Empire" is a phrase first used by Ronald Reagan and has since been used in a variety of ways. For the past few years, it's been used a few times in reference to the Yankees, starting with a statement from Red Sox President Larry Lucchino, after the Yankees beat out the Red Sox in pursuit of pitcher Jose Contreras (who never turned out to be as good as advertised anyway). But it's just a silly thing among fans. Some Yankee fans have embraced the "Evil Empire" tag, while Yankee haters like to use it to express their displeasure with the team. Either way, having anti-fans mock the Yankees with "Evil Empire" merchandise hardly seems like a bad thing (and I say that, again, as a fan). It's part of what keeps the rivalry going.

The term "evil empire" has a negative connotation because the word "evil" refers to that which is morally wrong or bad, immoral, wicked, harmful and/or injurious. The BASEBALLS EVIL EMPIRE mark will be understood to refer to the Club, and, upon information and belief, is clearly intended to do so, and thus may disparage Opposer[The Yankees], or bring Opposer into contempt or disrepute among a significant segment of the consuming public.

Of course, at the same time, even as they say that it's got a negative connotation, they claim they're also worried that people will think it's legitimate Yankee merchandise. I really don't see how that's possible though.

the Yankees hold that the phrase is so connected with the Yankees that people "are likely to believe that Applicant's goods, which are identical and/or closely related to the goods offered and services rendered in connection with the Club's marks, have their origin with Opposer and/or that such goods are approved, endorsed or sponsored by Opposer"--that the average fan, seeing shirts with the words "Evil Empire" and an altered logo, would assume the Yankees were selling the shirts.

So... either "Evil Empire" hurts the reputation of the team, or it's so closely connected to the team that it's effectively a common law trademark?

Of course, what this really comes down to is pure greed. It was really just a few decades ago that fans were able to make their own shirts supporting (or denigrating) teams, and it was considered perfectly reasonable. But, as we've discussed, that all changed in the 80s, when sports teams suddenly decided that they wanted you to pay to cheer (or boo) any particular team.

In this case, the folks selling the Evil Empire gear are going to try to defend their efforts claiming it's protected use as a "parody." I really have no idea how well that will hold up at the Trademark Office (or, eventually, in court), but just the fact that this is even in dispute seems pretty silly.

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Robot Journalist Writes A Better Story On College Baseball Perfect Game

Mike Masnick — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:13:24 PDT

A few weeks back, there was a fun story about how the website GWsports.com, which (as you might imagine) covers sports at George Washington University, became something of the laughing stock of the press world by publishing a game recap on a game between GW and the University of Virginia. The game recap reads pretty straightforward, opening with the fact that the GW team lost, and then spending a few paragraphs covering the various efforts by different GW players. It's only in the seventh paragraph, out of a grand total of eight, that it finally gets around to mentioning that the opposing pitcher, Will Roberts, threw a perfect game. If you're not a baseball fan, a "perfect game" is extremely rare. As the article does (finally) note, this is only the eighth such perfect game in NCAA Division 1 history (since 1957) and the first since 2002. Normally, you would think that any press coverage would start with the perfect game bit.

The national press, including the Washington Post, picked up on this and GW folks tried to defend the writing by noting that they're only in the business of promoting their own teams, not others:

“This is the George Washington website,” GWU sports information director Dave Lubeski tells Romenesko. “We’re in the business to promote our athletes and our team. We’re not claiming to be journalists.” What some call “the buried lead” was discussed after the story was posted, says Lubeski, and it was mentioned that the perfect game could have been noted in the sub-hed. But “we’re not in the newspaper business,” notes the SID.

I had sent that story around to a few people, because I thought it was pretty funny, but didn't have any obvious reason to post it here... until now. Apparently, in covering the story, Deadspin wondered if perhaps the original article hadn't actually been written by a newfangled automated software program that's been touted as being good enough to write sports stories.

Well, it turns out that the people who wrote that software, Narrative Science, were offended that their program might be thought of as having written an article so badly written, and fed their program the data from the game, and it popped out much better versions. They actually did two versions, a "neutral" point-of-view one, and one designed for GW fans. The "neutral" one brings up the perfect game in the first paragraph. The GW POV one does wait until the third paragraph, but still seems much better than the original...

So, perhaps the author of the original has passed the reverse Turing test, when you can't tell if a human is actually a human or a robot...

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The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong

Mike Masnick — Fri, 7 Jan 2011 19:39:00 PST

Nate Silver, who, before he became famous as a political data analyzer on his FiveThirtyEight website (now hosted by the NY Times), was famous to a much smaller group of folks for his similar data analysis of baseball data at Baseball Prospectus. Every so often, he jumps back to baseball analysis, such as with his recent effort to question some of the common wisdom concerning the Baseball Hall of Fame. There's a common complaint among fans and some in the press that the Hall of Fame has become "watered down" in some way, and that they're letting in players who really shouldn't qualify. The comment that is repeated way too frequently is "It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Very Good." However, Silver breaks down the actual data, and notes that percentage-wise significantly fewer players are getting into the Hall of Fame today than in the past. He shows the following chart to help prove the point: As he notes, the point is not to say that one period is correct, and the other is not, but simply to challenge the suggestion that admission to the Hall of Fame has become much easier today. And, yes, he also discusses some of the obvious counterpoints -- such as the fact that, thanks to expansion, there are now more players -- and why there are other equalizing forces (the internationalization of the game, for example).

It's an interesting article if you're interested in that kind of thing. But, what's most entertaining is that a large number of the comments on the story seem to simply refuse to accept what the data says. They don't refute the data. They don't suggest explanations that would explain the data. They flat-out ignore it and insist that the Hall of Fame has been watered down these days. I noticed this thanks to King Kaufman who aggregated some of the sillier comments. Here are a few:

"Too stringent"? Au contraire. Over the last couple of decades they have admitted so many bums that it defies description. If anything, the standards should be tightened. There are perhaps six active players who should EVER be considered.

We've dumbed down America and now you want to water down what makes a true athlete great. They should measure up or not be considered!!!! That's the problem with America continually relaxing standards and codes.!!!!

The statistical look at the question is entirely misdirected. There have been a handful of standout players in the game, something less than 50 in total.

i thought the hall was for extraordinary accomplishments not just very good ...the hall is so diluted these days.

There are probably some decent explanations for these kinds of mass delusions. I would guess that people who either never actually saw some of the Hall of Fame players from an earlier generation, or saw them so long ago and are overcome with nostalgia, are dealing with a bit of confirmation bias -- where they only remember (or know about) the highlights, and ignore the rest. With more recent players, they've probably seen them a lot more, or remember things a lot more clearly, and thus the "great" feats are diluted in their heads by the fact that they weren't preternaturally good (but, no one is).

That said, we often see this sort of thing around here. I've presented numerous studies concerning certain areas of interest, and almost immediately we get comments that don't try to rebut the data, or point to errors in the studies (and there may very well be errors or confounding factors), but to simply insist that what they've always believed simply must be true. It seems like a form of cognitive dissonance on display in ways that are both troubling and amusing. It's the basis of what I call "faith-based" decision making, where actual data is simply ignored for what "must be" true.

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MLB Issuing Tons Of YouTube Takedowns; Don't Try To Share Your Love Of Baseball

Mike Masnick — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:54:00 PST

A few folks have sent over the news that a whole bunch of YouTube videos containing short clips of Major League Baseball games were taken down recently. Considering the fact that a bunch were taken down at once, I'm guessing that MLB just uploaded a bunch of video to YouTube's Content ID system, and the system matched up a bunch of videos. The site that talks about this (a Philadelphia sports blog) points out how incredibly short-sighted this is in annoying fans. It also points out that the NHL actually encourages fans to share videos, and monetizes them with ads:

When it comes to online video, the NHL is an example of a league that just gets it. Instead of combing YouTube and other video sites, the NHL allows fans and bloggers to embed videos right on their site. In case you haven't noticed, most of our Flyers highlights are taken directly from PhiladelphiaFlyers.com. They encourage it. Why? Because it raises awareness for their product and is sometimes laced with an ad. Many news outlets do this too. People can use their videos, so long as they watch a :30 second ad prior to it. A fair trade off.

Of course, the site also claims that MLB's actions are "legal in every sense of the word." While that might be true in some cases, it sounds like certainly not all. The blog notes that many of the videos taken down have exceptionally brief clips of MLB coverage, suggesting that with at least some of them, there's probably a decent fair use claim:

I noticed that YouTube had sent me a few of my own. They removed eight videos that, when pooled together, included about 20 seconds of game play footage (they were mostly screenshots of fans, including guys in Nacho Libre masks).

If it's actually true that his videos contained a grand total of 20 seconds of MLB coverage across eight videos, you'd have to imagine that there's at least a reasonable possibility that the videos were protected by fair use. Unfortunately (thanks to the take downs), I can't actually see the videos to get a better determination of whether or not they were likely fair use. Either way -- whether fair use or not -- the site is right. Pissing off fans, out of some bizarre need to "control," when you could instead excite fans by enabling them to share their fandom, just seems incredibly short-sighted on the part of Major League Baseball.

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Thank Copyright Infringers For Still Being Able To Hear Great Moments In World Series History

Mike Masnick — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:39:00 PDT

If you're a baseball fan, you know that the World Series is going on right now, between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers (with the Giants looking damn good so far). On the night they won the League Championship Series to advance to the World Series, I was actually out walking my dog, listening to the game on the radio (it was a pretty nerve-wracking finish), and was actually a bit disappointed that radio announcer Jon Miller didn't pull out the obvious "The Giants win the pennant!" line, even though they had, in fact, won the pennant. As you hopefully know, that line was the famous call -- considered one of the greatest broadcasting moments in history -- back in 1951, when the (then) NY Giants' Bobby Thomson hit a homerun off the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers' Ralph Branca to secure the National League championship: Now, what you might not know is that the only reason we have that recording, is because someone recorded it at home. Reader Stephen points us to Joe Posnanski's absolutely awesome article on the best sports calls in history (which I'd actually read, but had missed this point), which notes that:

The man we all need to thank is someone named Larry Goldberg, a travel agent who had the good sense to ask his mother to tape Russ Hodges' call so he could listen to it after work. Because of Larry, we have the most joyous call in the history of sports to enjoy forever.

Yes, thanks to infringement, we have that moment in history.

And it's not the only one. Just about a month ago, the news came out that video tapes of the (previously lost) 1960 World Series had been found in the former wine cellar of Bing Crosby, who had been a part-owner of The Pirates. The final game of that series is considered one of the greatest games ever (well, less so if you're a Yankee fan...), but it had been lost... until last month. Crosby apparently couldn't bear to actually watch the game, he was so nervous (he went to Europe instead), but wanted to be able to watch it later, so he actually hired a film crew to record the official broadcast, and they were just recovered (actually, right outside of San Francisco...) last month.

So here we have two of the greatest moments in baseball that we only have the archive of the actual game recordings because of people technically infringing.

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Did The FCC 'Rebroadcast Or Retransmit An Account' Of MLB Game On Twitter?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 05:57:00 PDT

You all know the routine. Towards the end of the sporting event you're watching, one of the announcers will remind the audience that the sports league in question holds the copyright, and you can't do a damn thing about it. It's slightly different per league, but the NFL one reads: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." We wrote about that a few years back when law professor Wendy Seltzer posted a clip of just that NFL warning to show how the NFL was exaggerating its rights... and got a takedown notice. The MLB one is a bit different. It reads: "Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited." We wrote about that one because one guy asked MLB for permission to describe a game to his friend, and MLB wouldn't give it. The FTC has been asked to stop sports leagues from making such overly broad (and legally misleading) claims, but hasn't done anything.

I'm reminded about all of this because, as a part of the silly retransmission fight between Fox and Cablevision, where some viewers were blocked from seeing some of the MLB postseason games airing on Fox, apparently the FCC decided to make something of a statement on the issue by tweeting an ongoing account of one of the blacked out games, along with a link to its own consumer alert about the retransmission fight. Here's an example tweet from the FCC's official Twitter account:

Matt Cain relieved after 7 strong, 2 H, 0 ER. Giants scored on two singles, throwing error. SF up 3-0 top 9

Of course, this has some questioning whether or not the FCC just did a rebroadcast or retransmission of an account of the game without (one assumes) express written consent of Major League Baseball. Of course, MLB's random attempts to enforce its bogus claims of ownership on data have all failed, and I'm sure it knows better than to take on the FCC in a losing cause, but it does a nice job of highlighting just how ridiculous the "warning" is from the MLB, and makes you wonder why the FTC doesn't crack down on what appears to be copyfraud.

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MLB.com Writers Told They Can Only Tweet About Baseball

Mike Masnick — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:45:00 PDT

It's no secret that MLB.com, the online wing of Major League Baseball, is a bit of a control freak at times. It fought a long battle claiming to own the "facts" of a baseball game -- which it eventually lost. It's falsely taken down videos that were clearly fair use. Worst of all, it issued rules on how independent reporters could report on games. We're still amazed that any self-respecting newspaper would agree to such rules -- though, to be fair, it appears that MLB has not chosen to enforce many of those rules.

Of course, in this day and age, with social media making it easier and easier for anyone to communicate with anyone else, trying to overly aggressively control messages has proven to be a bit more difficult -- and, for the most part, that's probably a good thing. Last year, we had a story about baseball beat reporters using social media to build up a strong community, and build a really strong relationship with fans. Part of the reason why this worked was because those reporters talked about more than just baseball. Some of my favorite baseball reporters also talk about things like music, movies and TV shows, which makes them a lot more interesting and human. It's part of building a connection with a community, which is a necessity these days.

So it's disappointing to see that Major League Baseball appears to have gone way overboard in its new Twitter guidelines for MLB.com reporters (sent in by many, but first by Scott Crawford). Now, we've already seen other sports leagues, like the NBA and the NFL issue Twitter guidelines for players and officials. While those sometimes seem to go way overboard (such as fining a player for Tweeting a happy message after winning), you can understand the basic premise behind the plan. Of course, some players obviously have decided not to pay much attention to the official policies.

In this case, Major League Baseball apparently also sent out some "guidelines," to both players and MLB.com reporters. Many are guessing that this is in response to a former major league player, Mike Bacsik, who got fired from his radio job after Tweeting a racist remark. It might also be in response to Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and his Twitter account, which has been known to make news as well. Apparently, the guidelines for players are more or less common sense. However, it's a bit trickier with MLB.com writers.

What makes it tricky is that MLB.com has a pretty large staff of reporters itself. And while there were concerns early on that they wouldn't be independent enough, their coverage has actually been quite good and in many cases the equivalent of newspaper beat reporters. And many have built up followings on their own. For example, I've followed MLB.com reporter Bryan Hoch on Twitter for a while. Part of the reason I follow him was due to some very amusing discussions last year about his movie-watching habits (or lack thereof -- he hasn't seen many "classics").

But, apparently, that sort of thing won't be allowed any more. Supposedly, the word from on high from Major League Baseball is that all MLB.com reporters may only use Twitter to talk about baseball. All other topics are strictly forbidden. This seems likely to do a lot more harm than good. It takes away many of the reasons why people like following certain reporters, and takes away the connections they build up with fans. It's a symptom of an old way of thinking: once someone (anyone) does something "bad" with a tool, ban all other uses, even if there are many good things. It's an idea that is doomed to fail.

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Man Sues Bon Jovi, MLB, Others For $400 Billion Over Song He Claims Was Copied

Mike Masnick — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:55:00 PST

We see stories all the time of people who write a story or a script and then when they see someone else has success with a similar idea, they assume that it was "stolen" and they're owed millions. Or, as the case may be, billions. A Red Sox fan named Samuel Bartley Steele, who apparently wrote a song called "(Man I Really) Love this Team," in 2004 got upset when he saw singer Bon Jovi release a song "I Love This Town" which was then used by Major League Baseball to promote the playoffs in 2007. He claims that he gave copies of the song to Red Sox execs, Red Sox players and MLB execs -- and thus Bon Jovi's song must have stolen from Steele's song. Of course, the two songs are apparently entirely different -- and even Steele's own musicologist testified that the songs were different. The district court tossed out the case, noting that no reasonable jury would find a similarity, but the guy has appealed and is asking for $400 billion, yes, with a b. If he won that much, perhaps he could donate some to the team to pick up a free agent outfielder or two this off-season, but I imagine that this case won't last very long.

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Is It Really A Problem That 'Only' 31 Newspapers Sent Reporters To The World Series?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:23:13 PST

Earlier this year, we had a discussion on the changing nature of sports beat reporting in the internet era, and one of the points we made is that there really is an awful lot of overlap and duplication in effort in some cases (such as the NY media). And yet, as pointed out by Jay Rosen old school baseball reporter Murray Chass is complaining that about half of the newspapers that have baseball beat writers did not sent a reporter to the World Series this year, calling it a "sign of a dying industry." Apparently there are 60 newspapers in America that have beat reporters who travel with the teams they cover, but only 31 of those papers sent reporters to the World Series.

I'm really searching to see how this is a problem. First of all, those 29 other papers are all papers whose local teams are not in the World Series, meaning less interest. Second, those beat reporters are equally capable of watching the games on TV from the comfort of their own home and getting their quotes from the televised press conferences afterwards. It's not as if a player on the Yankees is going to break an important story to the Braves beat reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. All they'd really be doing is adding to the media scrum around the players before and after each game, adding absolutely nothing of value. On top of that, the count of papers also leaves out the national media reporters -- such as those from ESPN and Sports Illustrated -- as well as the the reporters employed by MLB.com. I'd argue that the fact that about half of the papers decided not to send their own beat reporters is a sign of (finally) smarter newspaper management in not wasting money on a boondoggle for a baseball reporter.

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MLB Refuses To Give Permission To Guy To Describe Game To A Friend

Mike Masnick — Fri, 4 Sep 2009 19:30:00 PDT

A couple years ago, law professor Wendy Seltzer used the NFL as an example of sports leagues performing copyfraud, by claiming copyright control beyond what is allowed by law. Specifically, she was talking about the warning mentioned at some point during every game. For the NFL it was: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." In Seltzer's case, amazingly, the NFL sent a DMCA takedown of her posting that clip to YouTube -- giving her another "teachable moment" on copyright abuse.

And yet, sports leagues still continue the copyfraud. One of the fine folks over at Consumerist, Phil Villarreal, found the wording of Major League Baseball's warning quite questionable:

"Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited,"

Unlike the NFL one, at least it didn't say "descriptions," but "account" is pretty close. So, Villarreal contacted MLB to request "express written consent" to provide an "account" of the game he had watched to a friend. To its credit, MLB responded and asked him to call someone in its business development department... who (perhaps reasonably) thought it was a joke and did not provide the written consent (and stopped responding to calls and emails).

Now, obviously, this is a bit of a joke (and a funny one), but it does highlight a rather serious problem. Copyright holders are pretty regularly claiming significantly more rights than they actually hold over content, and many people simply assume that they can do this. This leads to them to think that they don't have basic rights concerning not just "fair use" but stuff that is obviously not covered by copyright, such as an "account of this game." There really should be sanctions against such copyfraud.

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Finally, A MLB Team Gets A Deal For In-Market Online Streaming

Carlo Longino — Tue, 9 Jun 2009 20:12:00 PDT

Major League Baseball has long contended that fans should watch games in the manner in which it chooses, rather than how the fans themselves want to. This is the thinking behind its local blackout policies, first intended to "protect" ticket sales by not allowing the TV broadcast of games that weren't sold out, and lately, intended to "protect" local TV broadcasts by making it impossible for fans to watch their local team online. It takes the blackouts so seriously that it's even patented a way to black out local users from online streams, an absurd show of pride in something that basically just frustrates fans and customers. But there may be some cracks appearing in the local online blackouts, as the New York Yankees, Cablevision and MLB have reached a deal for in-market streaming of games. At first glance, the negotiations sound pretty convoluted, especially considering the Yankees own a stake in YES, the local TV rightsholder. But not surprisingly, the result -- that people in the Yankees' local market can only buy the online subscription if they're Cablevision subscribers that get the YES network in their cable package -- seems like it's par for the course for MLB, which has a penchant for trying to lock down everything baseball-related online.

The amount of baseball that's broadcast on TV has boomed over the past couple of decades, having escaped the thinking that making the game harder for fans to follow on TV was somehow actually good for it. Now, the same thing is playing out online, where MLB seems hellbent on frustrating fans who want to see all of their teams' games online. What makes online different than TV, in that putting up these walls in front of the game's most dedicated fans is somehow a good thing?

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MLB Gets A Patent On Making It More Difficult To Watch Your Favorite Baseball Team Online

Mike Masnick — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:51:00 PDT

One of the most annoying things about Major League Baseball's online viewing options is the ridiculous "blackout" areas. Basically, you can watch any team you want... as long as they're not our local team. Seriously. The misguided fear was that the local TV stations would lose out on revenue because people would be watching online instead of on TV. This is similar to the incredibly wrong theories when TV first became popular that local TV shouldn't be allowed to show local games if the stadiums weren't sold out. Rather than recognizing that giving fans more tools to watch games however they want, they seem to think that fans can be forced to watch in the method MLB wants. However, now MLB.com has taken it even further. It's patented its method for determining who to block out.

You can check out the full patent yourself to see if you can figure out how this was granted. If you asked any half-way competent programmer how to set up such a system, they could all come up with something identical to this. How is this possibly not obvious? Determining where an internet user is geographically has been around for ages. Limiting access by subscription levels has been around forever. Combining the two hardly seems new and innovative. This seems like it should fail based on general obviousness, as well as the new tests under the KSR ruling (on obviousness) and the Bilski ruling (on pure software patents). About the only "good" that comes of this is that perhaps it means other sports leagues won't use such an anti-fan policy.

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Baseball Writers' Ivory Tower Eroding

Dennis Yang — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:33:00 PDT

As newspapers like the Rocky Mountain News shutter operations, we hear more and more stories about the supposed looming end of journalism. The latest story, from the Wall Street Journal, fortells the doom of baseball writers, one of the oldest and most powerful sportswriting press corps in the country, in an article melodramatically titled Baseball Writers Brace for the End. The Baseball Writers Association of America seems to be buckling down and preparing for the "dark clouds" that they apparently see on the horizon. However, for an organization that only recently admitted web-only reporters into its membership, it makes sense that they see the changing journalistic environment brought on by the web as something bad rather than a new opportunity. Yes, it's expensive to send reporters on the road with teams, and yes, in these tough times, some papers are cutting their sportswriting staffs. That said, just because newspapers are cutting sportswriters, that does not mean that sportswriting itself will die. Like investigative journalism, sportswriting can certainly adapt to an online environment.

After all, it's not the paper that makes the content better, it's the content itself. Case in point, Yankee beat reporter Pete Abraham's blog is religiously read by hordes of Yankee fans. If, for some reason, The Journal News were to shut down, surely Pete would be able to find an audience to support him on his own. Granted, the Yankees would have to have the foresight to continue to give him press credentials. That said, large market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox are not likely to be the first victims to lose their writers. However, even in small markets, the MLB franchises themselves benefit immensely from well-written articles about their organizations. Mark Cuban pointed out last year that it is in the best interest of sports teams to keep the local coverage of their teams alive, since without it, their fans lose a vital connection to their teams. Cuban goes so far as to suggest that the teams form a "beatwriter co-operative" to fund coverage of their teams. Journalism purists may scoff at such a notion, fearing that funded reporters become merely corporate shills. But, in this era of growing transparency, anyone with a computer can easily point out if an emperor wears no clothes, so any reporter, whether on the MLB payroll or not, would think twice before squandering their hard-earned reputation on a questionable story.

That said, the costs of covering a baseball team should be plummeting. Baseball bloggers do a fine job of covering games by watching them on TV. Want an inside perspective on the game? More and more players are getting on twitter. Heck, sabermetric analysis of baseball games, popularized by Moneyball, does not even require that you ever go to a game (although, you're missing a lot if you don't). So, yes, even you can be a baseball writer, and perhaps that is what the BBWAA is really scared of.

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MLB Backs Down When Someone It Bullies Explains Fair Use To Them

Mike Masnick — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:42:07 PDT

For years now, Major League Baseball's online division, MLB.com, has been over aggressive in claiming ownership and control over anything associated with Major League Baseball -- even though court after court has told them they don't get to control everything. However, MLB just keeps on claiming ownership of things anyway, such as sending out various DMCA takedown notices to YouTube for any clip of baseball put up by anyone else. Larry Lessig has the story, though, of one fan who fought back and filed a detailed counterclaim about how his video was fair use and MLB was repeatedly abusing its power in damaging ways. Amazingly, not only did MLB relent, it featured the video it had just demanded get taken down on its own blog. To be honest, there's a chance that the two things are unrelated, and the blogger had no idea that the parent company's lawyers were trying to shut down the video -- but the story is a good reminder that if someone is overreaching in their takedown attempts, it can be effective to respond with a counternotice that clearly states the issues.

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MLB Threatens Guy Who Made A Cool iPhone App For Baseball Fans

Mike Masnick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:18:09 PDT

It's really disappointing watching various sports leagues abuse intellectual property law over and over again. Perhaps the worst offender has been Major League Baseball. MLB wants people to think that it owns absolutely everything having to do with baseball, even though the courts have shot it down repeatedly. Even when it may be legally correct, its moves tend to do more to harm the game than to help it. It's as if MLB wants to keep shooting itself in the foot. The latest example was sent in by William Jackson, who points out that MLB is threatening the guy who made a neat Baseball app for the iPhone.

MLB has its own baseball app for the iPhone, which costs $5, that shows scores and highlights -- but this free app doesn't compete with that one. Instead, it's basically a baseball encyclopedia, allowing fans to look up all sorts of interesting historical stats and information. In other words, it's the sort of thing that helps fans feel even more connected to the game. So what does MLB do? It complains that the guy has the actual logos of Major League teams in the app. MLB argues that this is trademark infringement, but that's questionable. This is helping to promote those major league teams, not harm or dilute their brand in any way.

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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Baseball Appeal; MLB Still Doesn't Get To Own Facts

Mike Masnick — Mon, 2 Jun 2008 17:56:10 PDT

Good news from the Supreme Court this week, as it has decided not to take up Major League Baseball's appeal over the question of whether it gets to "own" player names and stats. As you may recall, Major League Baseball had created a lucrative side business for itself "licensing" out player names and stats to fantasy baseball providers. This actually made them quite a bit of money, until one of those fantasy baseball companies put two and two together and realized that player names and statistics are public information and not subject to copyright (you can't copyright "facts"). MLB flipped out at the possibility of losing this revenue stream and sued, claiming ownership of all game data.

As MLB realized that claiming ownership of game data was never going to cut it in court, it changed the story somewhat, saying that it was really about the players' right of publicity, which also (somehow) included owning their stats. A district court quickly saw through this argument and told MLB that it had no case. Rather than admitting defeat (and recognizing that more widespread use of baseball info should bring more fans into the game), MLB appealed. The appeals court wasted little time in again telling MLB it had no case. But those folks at MLB are nothing if not stubborn. So, they asked the full appeals court to rehear the case and were turned down

So, again, rather than recognizing that perhaps all of these courts (and common sense) had a point, MLB appealed to the Supreme Court, who (as noted) turned them down. If you're keeping score at home (and, we're not claiming ownership of the score), that now makes 4 - 0 for the courts over MLB, and I think we've pretty much hit the 9th inning, as there are no more appeals. The only thing MLB can hope for now is for a different circuit to somehow (unlikely) come to a different conclusion and the Supreme Court to revisit the issue. But that seems about as likely as, say, the Seattle Mariners somehow coming back to win the World Series this year. Stranger things have happened, but not very often.

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Stephen Colbert Takes On MLB's Attempt To Bully Little Leaguers With Trademarks

Mike Masnick — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:39:32 PDT

For years, we've covered Major League Baseball's ridiculous attempts to falsely claim that it has ownership of different aspects of the sport. It's been on the losing side of court battles, repeatedly, but it just keeps pushing its luck. Earlier this year, we noted that MLB was bullying the Cape Cod League, which is considered the preeminent league where the best amateur kids get to compete against each other prior to the annual draft. The problem? The Cape Cod League had the temerity to buy uniforms from local providers, and to use (in just a few cases) names similar to major league teams, such as the Chatham A's and the Harwich Mariners. Of course, no one's going to confuse a team of amateur college players with the major league teams, but MLB demanded both a licensing fee and that the teams be required to buy from a much more expensive uniform supplier approved by MLB.

It appears that this was just the beginning. MLB is doing the same to an even younger group of kids: Little Leaguers in suburban Chicago -- where the teams have similar names, but very different logos (further clarifying the lack of connection). I'm sure taking away the names they recognize will really get those kids interested in the sport. This is, as per MLB's standards, incredibly shortsighted. MLB should be doing anything to build up fans -- and one way to do that is to get kids to really identify with major league teams and players -- and that means letting them use real names. I played Little League at that age, and kids are excited to play on teams with names similar to Major League teams. It certainly doesn't take away from MLB in any way.

Of course, now that the Little Leaguers are involved, this story caught the attention of Stephen Colbert, who decided to give his own, unique, spin on the story (if you're in an RSS reader, click through to see the video): Some great lines from Colbert: "Those kids put trademarked names on their jerseys without paying. You know what we call that in this country? Theft!... You see, they don't want this kind of criminality sullying the good things about baseball. These kids aren't just stealing team names, they're ripping off all kinds of stuff from the majors. Where do these kids get the idea of using a mitt? Or wearing a cup?" He then goes on to take it to the logical extreme, explaining why the press should stop mentioned Major League Baseball altogether to avoid infringing.

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Media Companies Consider Suing MLB Over Reporting Restrictions

Mike Masnick — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:34:00 PDT

We've discussed how both Major League Baseball and the National Football League have convinced the press to live with restrictions on how they can report on games online. For rather obvious reasons, this seems troubling. While both are private organizations that can set up the terms by which they hand out press passes, you would think that the media, with its strong belief in a free press, would refuse to go along with any restrictions. The NY Times is now looking into the issue, noting that a big part of the problem is still that the leagues somehow think they "own" sports content. It also points out that part of the problem was in thinking that "video" is only done by television networks who pay tremendous sums for exclusive rights. So the leagues are afraid that reporters with camera phones will put those huge contracts in jeopardy.

However, hidden down towards the end of the article is one interesting tidbit. A bunch of big media companies are actively doing legal research in preparation for bringing these restrictions into court. Specifically, they're interested in targeting Major League Baseball -- which has a special exemption from antitrust law from Congress. The media companies may use these restrictions to suggest that MLB is abusing that right. While it would definitely make for an interesting lawsuit, it's still difficult to see how the activities are, by themselves, illegal. The team gets to decide who it gives out press passes too -- and that's where the restrictions come from. If the media refused to take press passes and reported on the team in other ways (including buying tickets to the game for reporters) then it could report however it wanted -- just with a lot less access. But if all the major media started boycotting the terms of access this way, you can bet that MLB and the NFL would back down quickly.

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Why Should Newspapers Agree To MLB's Rules On How They Can Report On Baseball Online?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:14:00 PDT

Back in February, we noted that Major League Baseball (MLB) was following the NFL down the extremely slippery slope of putting in place restrictions concerning how reporters could report on baseball online. This included things like only very short video clips could be posted online, no more than 7 photos, and all non-text content had to be removed in 72-hours. If that all sounds like preventing reporters from doing their job, you'd be correct. As I suggested at the time, the answer should be for newspapers to simply ignore the rules and if MLB pulls their press passes to buy their reporters tickets to the games (rather than using press passes) or see how the teams feel without press coverage. While it appears that newspapers certainly were upset about these restrictions, rather than doing anything serious about it, they've apparently negotiated a "compromise." The compromise allows newspapers to now host more video and audio content than the original restrictions, but everything still needs to be removed within 72-hours unless there's a special exemption.

This is, of course, absolutely ridiculous. While it's perfectly legal (reporters don't need to get press passes, so the team can restrict them), it sets a tremendously bad precedent that journalists are allowing any outside control over how they can report on a game. This is all stemming from MLB's incorrect belief that it "owns" everything having to do with Major League Baseball -- and then wanting to artificially limit it so it can sell it to fans. Note that we're not just talking about actual game data here -- but interviews with the players that are conducted by the journalists. There's simply no legitimate reason why newspapers should allow MLB to dictate what it can do with that content or how it can report on it. All that this will do is serve to limit the kind of innovative reporting and community building that the MLB should be encouraging. It's a top down approach by an organization who thinks that only it can decide how people get access to news and info about the game. But it's going to stop newspapers from putting in place their own, perhaps more useful, services for fans, and that will only serve to limit the fanbase. It's upsetting that MLB would even try to do this and it's a travesty that newspapers acquiesced, even to the supposed "compromise" solution. It's opening the door to the MLB telling them what they can report on and any newspaper person should know better.

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