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Baseball Cybercasts on the Web

© Greg Spira

These days it's easier than ever to follow your favorite teams' games on the Web. Numerous sites have followed the lead of the now-defunct Instant Baseball site and brought almost-live cybercasts of all major league games to the Web. It's not quite like being at the ballpark, but for a baseball fanatic who wants to follow many games at once it can be bliss.

ESPN's Gamecasts, now available directly from ESPN's MLB Scoreboard page, are probably the most popular baseball cybercasts on the Web, and it's easy to see why. Once you have the Gamecast java applet up and running, you have easy access to a mountain of information. You can check the game status, the in-progress box score, the highlights, the lineups and even a pitch by pitch account of the game. And this year they've made it easy to switch from game to game. If you prefer less detail, ESPN also makes available another java applet, the Scoretracker, which updates all the current scores of teams you're interested in as often as every 15 seconds.

CBS Sportsline's Baseball Live is another popular place to "watch" games on the Web. There's not quite as much raw information available from Sportsline's applet, but some fans may find Baseball Live more appealing because of the animation (which is much improved from previous years) and sound available. Sportsline also features an HTML version of Baseball Live which reloads every minute for those who wish to avoid using java.

STATS, Inc. offers a real-time scoreboard it calls At The Park as part of its Fantasy Advantage service, which costs $20 a season. Unlike ESPN's and Sportsline's efforts, At The Park is not a Java applet but just a constantly updating html page. STATS tries to enhance its cybercast by providing specific situational statistics referring to each new batter at the plate. The service alone certainly isn't worth paying extra for over the others, which are all available for free, but if you purchase the Fantasy Advantage service you might find it more comfortable to use.

Total Baseball also sticks to a just HTML philosophy with its Totalcasts, and is able to provide a few new twists which enhance their cybercasts. There are charts which indicate every pitch location of the game plus diagrams of where every batted ball is hit. There are also very extensive in-ballgame stats. Users are definitely kept up to date on all the action here, but the frequent reloads can get irritating.

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