With the realization that box scores for spring training usually aren’t published for minor league baseball we find ourselves reaching, looking, seeking information with a ferver that many of us haven’t felt in years. The internet, the baseball fans glorious wealth of data, has made it easy on us. Add in 200 more channels on TV, XM radio and DirecTV’s sports package and there really isn’t anyone longing for sports info.
I get a glint of this feeling when listening to the Ironpig’s Radio Network during away games and tracking through the online gameday application to keep myself content until the next homegame.
Think back 20 or so years ago. We had 3-5 channels on the TV (Depending on which direction the antenna was pointing) and newspapers gave standings and box scores. For me, we had Phillies coverage and Channel 17 had Phillies games broadcast. What if you weren’t a Phillies fan? You only had one chance to see your team play and that was the NBC game of the week on Saturday afternoon. Not too many options.
Baseball cards. How far have they come along and I am delighted to see that they are getting back to their roots in terms of value. In the hayday of collecting, I remember entire shopping malls lined with vendors and displays. I couldn’t have enough time or money to walk the mall and get more than one unopened pack of cards. The before school cards trades, deals arbitrated by Margo the lunch lady and an always present and current baseball card price guide led to many blockbuster trades that make the Ryan Howard/Albert Pujols trade seem insignificant. And the cards themselves. I studied those cards, the stats, the teams, the annual and career numbers, even the corny comments that Topps put on each card.
The Baseball Digest, Almanac and anything published that you could get your hands on was read, re-read and studied at every opportunity. I had a whole table in the basement dedicated to my baseball studies. If I spent half as much time studying schoolwork as I did baseball I would be working for NASA right now.
This morning, as my quest to find minor league box scores at spring training came to a screeching halt, I got that same craving for information that captivated me so many years ago.
29 Days…
noisenation.mlblogs.com 
Why did the search for minor league spring training scores come to a screeching halt today?
Growing up in Allentown, we were lucky.
Phillies, of course, but also the Mets on old Channel 9 out of Seacaucus, NJ as well as the Yankees on old Channel 11 WPIX out of New York.
Good point about the old NBC Game of the Week.
I used to long for games on TV not involving the Phillies, Mets or Yankees because it was so novel.
Not anymore…
Yes, I’m here… it took me a while to find youse guys again… some cockamamie story was floating around that you’d registered ‘noisenation.com’…
Were you also wondering why certain spring games got pushed to The Comcast Network when at the same time, CSN just does commercial programs? Just because we =can= watch TCN doesn’t mean we will…
I am not a fan of comcast. I was under the impression that MLB like the NFL has to provide no cost broadcasting of games to the public as a condition of their monopoly on the sport. Being a DirecTV subscriber, comcast is the only way to see the Phillies these days.
Like you, I remember the days of my youth in the 80’s where I eagerly ran down the driveway to grab the paper and pour through the previous nights games. You would have to wait until the next day to check out the stats for the west coast games because they ended too late for that papers edition.
With that said, why in today’s day and age aren’t more games televised through minorleaguebaseball.com? I realize that some games are televised through the website (mainly certain teams who seem to be on-board with broadcasting their games), but every team does videotape their own games for scouting purposes. Why not just feed them through the internet? Maybe there’s not enough interest, but the technology is certainly there.
I believe it would be cost. Doing some research a few months back I discovered that minor league teams actually pay to broadcast their games over the radio. Bandwidth carries a high price tag and streaming video uses a boatload of it. I imagine it would be feasible if a sponsor was willing to shell out the cash for a long term deal to provide the online games. Next time you run into your favorite baseball executive, I would ask.
Good points. I remember hearing the same thing about the teams having to pay to broadcast their games online.
MILB currently charges for streaming video, but not for streaming audio. I’d gladly pony up some cash to be able to watch the R-Phils on a regular basis.