MLB at Bat

Blackouts are the most frustrating thing a sports fan can deal with. You move away from your favorite team (or live somewhere in the midwest where the team affiliations of neighboring states get flaky), yet you still want to follow them. You can't see them on TV, since (understandably) the local stations want to follow their own home teams. But you can't easily venture online, since the Powers That Be have determined that listening to streaming radio online doesn't grant you permission to hear the game, even if you're listening to the same advertisements as the local audience. If you're dealing with the NFL, it gets even worse, as even the team minutes away from your house may be blacked out if ticket sales are weak.

For better or for worse, some of the sports leagues have developed a solution - pay them money, and you can get different kinds of access to the entire league's content. This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, you probably don't want access to the entire league, in which case you're always going to be paying for service you don't need. Second, said prices can be enormous depending on what you're after. Full season access to televised ball games? Better save your coins for that Triple Play package. And good luck making sure you get exactly what you need. My roomate got giddy over a supposedly sweet deal for NFL games on DirectTV, only to discover that there are at least two packages available, and the one he sprung for didn't grant games in HD or guarantee no blackouts. He haggled to get that version for free, but that's not the point.

As frustrating as this all is, I'll admit I'm willing to pony up a bit for a service. And thankfully (if you want to call it that), MLB has done better than most sports in creating different services. You can get TV access, online video and radio access, and now, in the era of smartphones, there exists a new program called MLB At Bat. Far as I can tell, it is one of the cheapest options out there. For a $15 flat fee, you can download an app for iPhone, Blackberry or Android that allows gives you live data of every MLB game, and even better, full radio broadcasts. If you're on iPhone, you can also get some video. It lasts all season and through the playoffs, and appears to have no blackouts.

No matter how annoying it may be to have to pay for this service, I'll admit that getting radio broadcasts of the Mets wherever I go for less a week's lunch budget is hardly the worst sacrifice. So I took the plunge and downloaded the Android version today.

So far, I'm liking it, but the season is long, and there are questions that still need answering. The best feature is the lack of one - there are no accounts to create, no signing in to be done. You just fire up the app and go. There's also a wealth of data at your fingertips. At Bat has all the info you'd expect from Yahoo! Sports or ESPN, including the box score, play by play breakdown, and analysis of every pitch. There are ways to get this info for free, but on a phone that lacks Flash and the like, being able to get it conveniently has its advantages over relying on apps that may not refresh correctly, or finding a browser page that will actually display.

Now about that audio... it lets you choose your radio station, if there's a choice, and the sound quality is crystal clear, or at least, as clear as it would be on AM radio. There's something about that AM sound, however, that makes baseball on the radio so charming, so I'm glad that everything sounds the way I like it. I have had problems with the connection already on Opening Day, though I have to test listening to it via Wi-Fi. On that note, I'll be curious to see how much data a single game uses up. I know I'm on an unlimited plan, but I'm still figuring out if these phone providers have some sort of hidden bandwidth cap (if it's five gigs, as I've heard it rumored, I'll be fine this month, but what of the future?)

Lastly, the Android version currently lacks gameday video. I don't actually need this feature, since baseball is the one sport that works perfectly well on the radio, but I can understand a bit of complaint on principle, since the feature exist for iPhone users paying just as much. Still, iPhone lacked it in its first year of the app, so I'm sure MLB will roll it out eventually.

Bottom line, At Bat is shaping up to be a solid program and a good value. As long as the sound quality and the streams stay strong, I'll be in heaven all season.

PS - Forgot to mention, there needs to be a better way to start/stop radio streaming. Currently you must go to audio, and hit a small stop button that doesn't easily recognize touch inputs, and looks more like a checkbox than a stop button. Something nice and big at the bottom of the app would be nice.