February 03, 2007
Long Day in the Caribbean
I tuned into MLB.com's coverage of the Caribbean Series last night, thinking I'd catch the second game of the day. It turns out game 1 was still in progress as it proved to be the longest game in Caribbean Series history.
Luis Maza and Ronny Cedeno had consecutive doubles in the top of the 18th to give Venezuela a 3-2 lead in the series opener, but the Dominican Republic tied it on Bernie Castro's single and won on Batista's sacrifice fly.
Miguel Tejada also homered for the Dominican Republic to tie Tony Armas' record for Caribbean Series home runs with 11. Batista also homered.
In the night cap, Puerto Rico demolished Mexico 11-1. It's a six game, round robin tournament.
I bought access to the Series, primarily to test MLB.TV once again. Well, the audio is just fine and the picture quality is good especially on the smallest screen size. But for me, it still appears as a series of stills. I wrote the head of MLB Advanced Media, who called me earlier this week, and he had MLBAM's Chief Technology Officer give me a call. We left it that I'd call him back and set up an appointment so that we can really try to make this work. For me it doesn't appear to be bandwidth speed, for it always test well above what they require. But I'm assured that the MLB "geek squad" is going to make this work to my satisfaction. However, since I think that some important factors are and will be beyond my personal control, I'm not getting my hopes up. And besides it still just isn't great working all day at my computer and then having to sit there again to watch baseball. And with no unobstructed southern sky view, DirecTV is no option no matter what. Oh well ...