Day: May 7, 2014

GameChat – Minnesota @ Cleveland #3, 6:05pm

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Another rubber match. I have to start trusting Nolasco at some point if he keeps doing well enough but .. not yet.

Still no Mauer and now EE in left field.. this could be interesting.

Minnesota @ Cleveland
Dozier, 2B Morgan, CF
Fuld, CF Swisher, 1B
Plouffe, 3B Brantley, LF
Colabello, 1B Santana, C, 3B
Kubel, RF Murphy, Dv, RF
Suzuki, K, C Cabrera, A, SS
Pinto, DH Chisenhall, DH
Escobar, E, LF Gomes, Y, C
Florimon, SS Aviles, 2B
  Nolasco, P   Salazar, P
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Minnesota 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 9 0
Cleveland 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 4 9 1

…that was a hard fought game actually – I don’t think the Twins have much to regret except that they didn’t come out on top –especially against a division opponent, that stings. When the walk-off was only possible because poor Escobar had one bad play in Left Field where he has very little experience? Yeah, he’s not feeling good about it either. I feel kind of bad for him.

We’ll have to see what happens in the final game of the series tomorrow.. for our west coast fans, you get breakfast baseball!

Talk to Contact – ongoing situation…

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Soo…. yeah, I never expected a Knuckleballer to make national baseball news but I REALLY never expected it to be such an odd situation much less involve several other friends and colleagues.

Reported this afternoon by :

May 7, 2014, 2:10 PM EDT

A bunch of baseball-related podcasts were removed from iTunes. Why?

When we woke up yesterday morning we lived in a world where any baseball fans who so loved their team that it inspired them to tell everyone about that love could do so in the form of a podcast on iTunes. When we woke up this morning multiple baseball podcasts had been removed from iTunes, at the request of Major League Baseball and/or Major League Baseball Advanced Media on intellectual property grounds.

Multiple podcasts, including Twins podcast “Gleeman and the Geek” (hosted by HardballTalk’s own Aaron Gleeman), another Twins podcast “Talk to Contact,” Pirates podcast “Pirates Prospects,” Mets podcast “Mets Musings,” Cubs podcast “Bleacher Nation,” Yankees podcast “It’s About the Yankees, Stupid,” Rangers Podcast “Rangers Podcast in Arlington” and several others were removed from iTunes…

See the rest of the report at Hardball Talk.

Talk to Contact’s response:

MLB asks iTunes to Remove Baseball Podcasts, iTunes Complies (Updated)

UPDATE: If you’re curious about how to continue to listen, David Temple at FanGraphs has the scoop – http://www.fangraphs.com/not/advice-listening-to-baseball-podcasts-after-562014/

Major League Baseball, we’ve been told, has decided that there are too many people talking about baseball on the internet and sent a request to iTunes to have many baseball related podcasts removed.  We’re one of the many podcasts affected.  So far, based on what he’s been able to find so far, John Bonnes has found that in addition to Twins podcasts, the Cubs, Orioles and Mets.

While this seems like a minor issue, MLB might just be getting started.  Obviously if they make the move to remove all team specific podcasts from iTunes there will be additional pressure on them to reverse course, but they might just start asking the big name hosting sites to remove team specific blogs as well. 

Get in contact with Major League Baseball and let them know how you feel.  We’ll be doing the same.

For now, you can continue to find our podacst right here at TalkToContact.com, and we’ll be available on Stitcher Radio.  For our Android users, there should not be any change right now.  But maybe MLB will go after us there as well. 

Stay tuned, and there is more to come on Episode 82 about how we plan to handle this going forward.