"Think of data as a silo that exists within the cloud. That data can be tapped at anytime, from anywhere, using tablets with applications specifically designed to access the data and give it context. That has precisely what is happening in baseball."

"This is how baseball’s archives are created now -- not by merely storing videotapes on a shelf, as it has been done for decades, but by a team of 'loggers' whose job is to watch every game as it happens (2,430 during the regular season, and up to 41 in the postseason) and add computerized notes on every play, no matter how ordinary."

"There is so much competing for a kid’s attention that it’s hard to give them a stack of cardboard and expect them to spend a day on that stuff."

"As a device for the efficient consumption of MLB content, the iPad is so satisfying that I miss my cable television subscription -- and paying fees that ultimately make their way back to the franchises and the league -- even less than I did before."

"There are a million questions to choose from, but right now the most cutting-edge research is in the mysterious, ethereal, and, most maddeningly, subjective world of defense. And that quest to objectify the subjective has opened a new front in the battle between the Yankees and their eternal enemies, the Red Sox."

"When MLBAM started, it wasn't yet feasible to offer streaming video online, so MLBAM's first commercial product was online audio feeds. Its primary target was passionate baseball fans that had moved but still wanted to be able to follow their hometown team. To minimize conflicts with the clubs, it only let people listen to out-of-town games." From there, it grew.

"The goal is simple: to replicate the company's smashing success in the financial world, where the $1,500-a-month Bloomberg terminals are in many ways the lifeblood of the industry, into the sports world. Bloomberg is starting with baseball. The company has just launched its fantasy product, which costs $31.95 for the year and is available on MLB.com." Watching with interest ...

More details from the December 2009 deal announcement: "For the MLBAM-Bloomberg product being sold to MLB teams, Bloomberg will take MLBAM’s real-time statistical feed from every game, as well as location-based data already being developed in partnership with Sportvision, and apply an almost limitless amount of analytical tools." Neat! Visuals: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/bloomberg-sports-professional-tool/ Via: http://twitter.com/o_crunk/status/8470361155

"What MLB showed off today could be the best version of Gameday and MLB.tv that BAM has developed so far -- even better than the desktop experience."

"A new camera and software system in its final testing phases will record the exact speed and location of the ball and every player on the field, allowing the most digitized of sports to be overrun anew by hundreds of innovative statistics that will rate players more accurately, almost certainly affect their compensation and perhaps alter how the game itself is played."

"Apparently Kerouac, also a little nuts about horse races, created a system of fantasy horse racing using marbles. He actually describes a version of this game in Doctor Sax ..."

And with fantasy horse racing: "The ball bearing traveled faster than the marbles, some of which were intentionally nicked to indicate equine fragility and mortality. So the ball bearing became the nearly invincible horse Repulsion, 'King of the Turf,' whose legendary speed and stamina are celebrated in Kerouac’s racing sheets."

Geolocation patent will also allow targeted advertising.

Three weeks into the 2009 baseball season, subscription sales are up 45%, iPhone At Bat app sales total $1.3 million gross. [Subtract 30% Apple share, that's $910,000 net for a mobile app that delivers mostly repurposed content and data. Nice revenue stream if you can build it.]

Turf writers not alone in decline: "Baseball's independent press corps ... is fading. As newspapers cut budgets and payrolls, the press boxes at major league ballparks are becoming increasingly lonely places, signaling a future when some games may be chronicled only by wire services, house organs and web writers watching the games on television."

"MLB is about to stream a season of more than 2,000 live games in hi-definition with more features than any cable box."

MLB expands online offerings, subscription packages. New video players comes in HD and works much like DVR systems.

"Our fans are never wrong," says MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman. "We can never suggest that a fan shouldn't do everything he or she is doing to watch a baseball game… the best way to combat these gray activities is to have a better product: higher quality, more streams, high definition, things that [Slingbox] can't do."

"As the world scrambles to master online video, crusty old baseball already has it figured out."

Straight up, old media baseball writing: "This is a site for baseball columns, not for baseball blogs."

Pat Jordan on the trouble with sports journalism.

The sort of thing I'd like to publish on R360

An experiment in citizen sports journalism (very little racing)