Spring Training is officially under way with pitchers and catchers reporting to various camps in Arizona and Florida. Routines and rituals can now become established for Major League Baseball players as everyone pursues a World Series dream.
The opening of camps also heralds a tradition and a routine for fans just like you. Subscriptions are now available for MLB.TV Premium at $119.95 per year and for MLB.TV at $99.95 per year. This is when the masses sign up, to watch live Cactus and Grapefruit League exhibitions and then a whole season of live games.
Take it from Kevin Spradlin of LaVale, Md. He just subscribed to MLB.TV and said he will use it to follow multiple MLB clubs.
"I live in far western Maryland now and I can watch the games I want, including the Cardinals, Mariners and Royals," Spradlin said. "Through life in the Army, I followed Seattle and Kansas City and shortly after I got out, fell in love with the Cardinals -- my grandmother's favorite team, as she is from Missouri -- after watching them at Busch Stadium on Opening Day 2007.
"Now I can watch any game, any time. As a baseball fan, I simply couldn't pass up this affordable opportunity. The price is just right and the live-streaming video quality is excellent. I love the technology."
Millions have subscribed to MLB.TV since its inception in 2002, and it is back better than ever for its eighth season as a bar-raising technology in pro sports. A subscription will give you immediate access to relive every moment from every Major League game played in the 2009 season, including the Yankees' World Series clincher.
As part of the subscription, you will be able to watch or listen to more than 150 live games from Florida and Arizona as teams prepare for the 2010 regular season. The Spring Training schedule starts with Braves vs. Mets on March 2 in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
Portability is one of the biggest 2010 features, as you will be able to enjoy convenient MLB.TV options optimized for numerous screens, from home and office computers to laptops and large monitors. Additional distribution through apps on various Apple products, including the company's latest innovation, the iPad, essentially means that MLB.TV has something for everybody, everywhere there's an Internet or mobile connection.
The full schedule of 2,430 regular-season games is included, and most of those are delivered in HD quality (where available). MLB.com's proprietary speed detection allows high-speed users to receive crisp, best-in-class streaming video on any size monitor.
Fans also will get real-time highlights and stats; on-demand access to full-game archives for viewing of any inning from the whole season; MLB.com condensed games featuring a quick, detailed journey from first pitch through the final out; access to MLB.com Gameday Audio and a new, interactive, proprietary pitch-by-pitch display; clickable linescores that take visitors straight to any half-inning of a game; and a fantasy player tracker consisting of ballplayers customized by subscribers and integrated with participating league rosters.
MLB.TV Premium subscribers get all that, and they also can enjoy the following features: Choice of home or away broadcast feeds, so favorite announcers are always a simple click away; DVR for pausing, rewinding and jumping back to live action; and a multi-game view (Quad Mode, Picture in Picture and Split Screen).
MLB.com made its 2010 MLB.TV subscriptions available on Jan. 27, featuring state-of-the-art delivery of live, out-of-market MLB games as part of an unprecedented full season of access to the product over a variety of devices. That includes customers enabled to buy through applications on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the brand-new iPad.
Jeremy Keller is a Cardinals fan and a computer science major at Indiana University, and he said in an email to MLB.com that he has MLB.TV for 2010 "because I am a diehard baseball fan and also a techno gadget freak! I have an iPhone and and iPod Touch and will be getting the iPad. I love being able to take baseball with me wherever I go."
Many fans are asking when the 2010 MLB.com At Bat app will be available and on what platforms, and the answer is to subscribe to MLB.TV and then stay tuned as it will be available between now and Opening Day. The anticipation over that 2010 app is understandable given the impact it had on so many fans last season.
The MLB.com At Bat app was synched up with MLB.TV during the 2009 season so that fans could watch all live out-of-market games over their iPhone and iPod Touch devices. That changed everything. It was the overall No. 2-selling app in iTunes for '09. Rave reviews included "Best Multimedia App" by Macworld and "2009 Most Valuable App" by Sports Illustrated, and CNET called it "another step in proving MLB.com's technical superiority."
The success of At Bat made it obvious to people that an MLB.TV subscription would be a natural fit as well for Apple's newest product. It will look different, but no matter what, it always starts with having an MLB.TV subscription, which you can get right now.
The 2010 MLB.TV media player will deliver a fleet of enhancements in a convenient, cutting-edge Adobe Flash format, offering an unparalleled live viewing experience for every out-of-market regular season game. Meanwhile, the MLB.com iPad application will support MLB.TV natively without Flash. It might not have the full feature set of the Flash version at the launch, but features will be added over time.
Baseball is back at last with the reporting of players to camps, and for them it is now a matter of establishing routines -- throwing in bullpens, hitting in the cages, spending much of your life at the ballpark and entertaining the fans. It is time for you to establish, or re-establish, a summertime way of life as well. Your Spring Training is here, an opportunity to enjoy MLB.TV and be more connected to the game than anyone else.
Mark Newman is enterprise editor of MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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