Evolution

Today's unpaid promotional announcement for the MLB Network is follows.

MLB Network can be found on channel 107 in the Appleton area on Time Warner Cable. Right now there is just a promotional film on the channel. Regular programming starts tomorrow at 5:00pm CDT.

Now, to today's story on the evolution baseball coverage.

Starting with print:

In his book, "But Didn't We Have Fun? An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870," author Peter Morris writes on page 40:

"The game's association with the printed word spurred its growth. For starters, print was ideally suited to communicating the changes made by the Knickerbockers. As anyone who has struggled with an instruction manual can appreciate, print is not a medium that is well suited for explaining something to someone who is entirely unfamiliar with it. But ... that was not much of a problem in the 1850s because the country knew the rudiments of the game. More important, print was effective for the task at hand: listing changes, updates, and revisions to an already familiar activity and thereby creating the uniformity that American bat-and-ball games had lacked.

To Telegraph?

In the book "Breaking News: How The Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, And Everything Else," Thomas Edison is quoted on the remarkable manner in which AP set up a single, national circuit for the 1916 World Series that featured a knotted strand 26,000 miles long. That allowed AP to deliver the play-by-play direct from the ballpark to all 700 of its media members with no intervening relay or delay.

To a certain media that is pretty important to me:

That game on Aug. 5, 1921, was broadcast by KDKA of Pittsburgh, and the hometown Pirates beat the cross-state Phillies, 8-5. Harold Arlin was the first announcer. That fall, KDKA and WJZ of Newark, N.J., broadcast the first World Series game on the radio, with Rice and Tommy Cowan calling the games. They were not actually at the game, but rather, were reading the telegraph reports over the radio. The next year, they did it from what would become known as a broadcasting booth.

To another certain media that I've spent a lot of time with:

The first televised baseball game was on May 17, 1939, a 2-1 victory by Princeton over Columbia at the latter's Baker Field. The game was aired on W2XBS, an experimental New York station that later became WNBC-TV.

The first televised MLB game was on Aug. 26 of the same year, once again on W2XBS. Just as Rice had overlapped the transition from print to radio in calling that first game, now Barber was overlapping the transition from radio to TV by calling this Dodgers-Reds doubleheader at Ebbets Field. The Reds won the first game, 5-2, and the Dodgers won the second, 6-1. Barber made the call without benefit of a monitor and with only two cameras capturing the action. One camera was on Barber and the other was behind the plate.

with this little note

The 1948 Boston Braves won the National League flag and drew 1.46 million fans, and then they decided to sell the TV rights to all of their home games for the next two years. Before long, they were raking in TV revenue but fans were staying home in droves to watch on TV instead. In 1953, the Braves moved to Milwaukee and refused all offers to televise home games.

The internet in August 2002

It was an experimental stream of a Rangers-Yankees game, viewed by 30,000 fans, many of whom were at work and going back and forth between work and play windows on their computers. The following season, Major League Baseball became the first sports league to stream its full schedule over the Internet via what would become known to fans worldwide as MLB.TV. It also presented the first opportunity for full-scale on-demand viewing, letting fans choose any half-inning of any game that season as well as classics. In 2008, iTunes downloading of key MLB games became another staple for many of us.

Mobile and MLB Network finish the story.

A Promotional Top 10

MLB.com has a Top 10 list to promote the MLB Network. Is it a David Letterman Top 10? Well, it starts out like that.

The MLB Network debuts at 6 p.m. ET on Thursday in about 50 million homes, by far the largest launch in cable history. It will be free on your local TV provider, easy to find and many people will stumble across it and ask the question:

Why should I watch?

The easiest answer is:

"Because 'House' and 'Rachael Ray' and 'Dancing With The Stars' and 'American Idol' and 'Oprah' and 'Family Guy' are going to talk about other things, like medicine and food and dancing and singing and books and gross stuff. The MLB Network is going to be all about Major League Baseball. Life is good, TiVo the rest."

For those adjusting to the concept of a different lifestyle in 2009, there is a more detailed response. Here are 10 reasons to watch:

The reasons follow. Winks at The Bucky Channel will really get a kick out of #4.

It was the summer of 1998, and new MLB Network on-air reporter Trenni Kusnierek told onmilwaukee.com this story of what happened one day back then:

"When I was a part-time TV producer at Channel 12, I liked to practice reporting. Well, one day during a Brewers-Phillies game at County Stadium, I had a few minutes to practice, so a photographer and I headed to one of the entrances to the lower level seating deck. I was positioned with the game behind me. The photographer insisted on using his light, which is pretty bright. So while Jose Valentin is up to bat and I'm improvising a report, I noticed people around me starting to boo. I turned around and realized that the photographer's light was shining right in the eyes of the Phillies' pitcher and the ump stopped the game because of it. The TV cameras showing the game were trained on me as the reason for the game delay, and Matt Vasgersian was poking fun at me in the TV booth. I had no idea it would distract anyone, but there I was, accidentally stopping the game with the whole stadium booing me."

Fast forward a decade. Now there are 1,200 combined total light fixtures throughout Studio 3 and Studio 42 at the MLB Network's home in Secaucus, N.J. Now Vasgersian is a studio host. Now Kusnierek is an on-air reporter. There is a good chance someone is going to unearth that little story. (Oops, we just did, thanks to Google.)

There is something about #6 that is in turns neat, disappointing, and insulting. The neat part is in bold. The disappointing part is in italics. The insulting part is in bold italics.

Tradition. The MLB Network will open with Don Larsen's 1956 World Series no-hitter for the Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers, the first time a mass audience has seen that in more than 52 years. Guess what you are probably going to be charmed by the most? Those original commercials between innings and those announcer plugs, all signs of a halcyon time gone by. You will have Larsen and his catcher, Yogi Berra, talking about it in the studio after the game is shown. How perfect is that?

It won't be the Baseball Classic Channel, so don't expect to find a place that lives in the past. What you can expect to find is an all-hour network that embraces its past along with its present and its future, so that a 17-year-old fan with a microscopic attention span who tunes in will find a familiar high-volume, video-game world where you also learn about what got us to where we are today. MLB Network CEO Tony Petitti said it will take "six to seven years" to digitize the entire history of broadcast Major League Baseball, an indication of how serious the network is about remembering.

So, we'll be able to watch the entire 1957 Braves-Yankees World Series in about...2015?

Click the link for the full list.

101 dies insquequo Oris Dies.

More on MLB TV

Lots of ties to the Milwaukee Brewers in this mlb.com article about the new on-air talent of MLB TV.

But first, a bit about what to expect during the season.

"MLB Tonight" will air every weeknight of the regular season, beginning at 6 p.m. ET and ending at 2 a.m. ET or at the conclusion of the last game played on the West Coast, with a shorter version on weekends.

Eight hours of a studio show when there are games being played? Okay.

Before getting into the bios of the people on the air for MLB TV, just a note that in the mlb.com wind up to the kick off of the network, there are some stories coming up that may be interesting. Tomorrow: Ten reasons to watch and Wednesday: Evolution of games' delivery.

Now, the Brewer alums on the network

Trenni Kusnierek brings her experience as a sports anchor on pregame Pirates broadcasts from 2003-07 and Brewers broadcasts this past season, working for Fox Sports Net in both areas. She's a graduate of Milwaukee's Marquette University with a degree in broadcast and electronic journalism. She spent two years at WDJT TV 58 in Milwaukee after breaking into the business at WQOW TV in Eau Claire, Wis.

"It goes without saying that we're thrilled to be on the ground level of the MLB Network," Kusnierek said. "We have the cream of the crop from top to bottom. That's the way I feel. Everybody is the best. Everybody is hardworking. No one thinks there are a limited number of hours or dedication they could put into the new Network, which says a lot about how successful it will be."

Dan Plesac was a left-handed reliever who saved 158 games in his 18-year career that began with the Brewers in 1986 and ended with the Phillies in 2003. As such, he was the last Philadelphia pitcher to hurl off the mound at Veterans Stadium when it closed at the end of that season. He was a three-time AL All-Star with the Brewers from 1987-89. His broadcasting career, thus far, has been short and sweet. He acted as a studio analyst, making live pregame and postgame appearances for Cubs games on Comcast Sportsnet Chicago. He also made weekly appearances on "Chicago Tribune Live," covering the Cubs and White Sox.

Matt Vasgersian leaves the balmy west coast for New Jersey and takes over as one of the main studio hosts for the Network's signature show. Before his San Diego experience, Vasgersian worked in the Brewers' broadcast booth for five seasons and had six years gaining experience in the Minor Leagues. He has a national profile, working for NBC on its Olympic broadcast team, among other major network programs.

"I'm really looking forward to this," he said. "I mean, obviously, we're all excited. But what we're not used to and what we don't know in terms of presentation is probably the most exciting part of this."

Network

I'm mad as ... oh, not the movie? MLB.com has a feature on how the new MLB network was built.

Now we have to learn how to drive it," Tony Petitti said on a December tour of the MLB Network's renovated startup facility.

That is what it feels like with less than a week to go before the largest network launch in cable television history. It has been a dizzying blur of design and demolition, creativity and construction, recruiting and rehearsing.

Now, nearly two years after the initial talks about what it all might look and feel like, the moment of truth is almost here. The MLB Network will greet you with its Hot Stove Show at 6 p.m. ET on Jan. 1, starting with an introductory message from the people who are about to change your world (free) in a way no other 24-hour sports network can.

Yeah, no one's going to be watching the Rose Bowl around that time. Anyway, head over to that link for a time line and everything.

103 dies insquequo Oris Dies.