Pro Yakyu Live! May 29, 2005 (Sunday)

I didn't see if there was a specific place to vote but, I want Yokohama.

[From Admin: This is the place.]

BayStars vs. Marines is probably the better game, but if the Tigers are involved, that's where I'm casting my vote.

"We're all behind our baseball team,
Go get 'em Tigers!
Japan series bound and picking up steam,
Go get 'em Tigers!"

YOKOHAMA!

Check my logon.

Hmm. 2-2. Interesting considering that there are so many more Tigers' fans hanging around.

Anyway, with less than 40 minutes left to go until game time, and while I'd personally rather watch the 'Stars and Marines, I think I'll go with Hanshin vs. Rakuten game since I had just done the Yokohama vs. Lotte card a couple of weeks ago. One reason I like inter-league play is to have more match-ups to watch (than watching us play the save five teams over and over). For me to broadcast the same match-up twice in a couple of weeks seems to violate some sort of personal principal.

So, Hanshin vs. Rakuten it is!

While Hanshin won, it was an especially exciting game the last couple of innings for Rakuten. The 87.0MB MP3 file can be downloaded for your PodCasting pleasure here.

Mr. Westbay,

I'll be moving to California for work here at the start of June. Since I'll be in a time zone better suited for viewing Pro Yakyu, I can help out with the live broadcasts if you want. I've not been 100% helpful for this in the past, but with my move I'm getting away from dial-up so imagine I'll be able to be a bigger help. I will be available for weekend games. If you want help, I'll be able to give you a better commitment come the middle of June. Just thought I would put the offer out there.

That sounds great! The games could certainly use a knowledgable commentator during to bring more life to them. I find that when I'm trying to lookup some factoid during a player's at bat, I either miss a pitch or two or the batter reaches base/is retired before I can confirm what it was I wanted to comment on. "Real" commentators have a staff feeding them trivia constantly.

Eng-san sent me a PDF of rosters with game day stats for one game, and that was absolutely fantastic. (Thanks, Eng-san.) I just haven't had the time to properly prepare for games with something like that. And I don't trust my own memory a lot of times.

One thought I had was to have a guest commentator located anywhere else in the world "phone in" via Skype and give color commentary. Also, have someone monitoring other games and "phone in" when something big happens in one of those games for live updates.

Another thought that was suggested, by Borisov-san, I think, was to have an audio Pro Yakyu News on a daily basis. I've got all the necessary pieces for it here in my Mac. It's just a matter of putting something together. (The "where can I get the time to do this right?" problem again.)

One thing that the audio games don't do that we had last year with the chat session games is listener interaction. I thought that Skype could take care of that, as IP calls are free, as is the software. But I think that, since the games can be downloaded later, many people (with broadband) find it easier to time shift and listen to the recording. (I get about 30 downloads for each game.) So I was thinking of maybe having some sort of Internet "talk-radio" show. The day and time zone-friendliness would be a big factor in its success, I'm sure. Also preparing material to jabber on about between calls.

If you (or anyone else) are interested in helping out in any of these ways, I'd be happy help you out in getting what you need setup. A key component that I can't help with, though, is broadband connectivity. I've had broadband 24/7 connectivity for the last eight years, so I take it for granted. Internet telephony like Skype are available on most platforms and are free, as is much of the software needed to broadcast (multi-platform, Open Source).

What other ways of helping are you thinking of?