Baseball season is officially upon us, and while the game is all about hanging out in the bleachers and being outside, there are still some very cool ways that tablets and smartphones can keep you tied in to Major League Baseball.
The biggest app on the market is MLB At Bat, the officially sanctioned app put out by the league and filled with the kind of information superfans crave. The app itself is free, and for downloading it, you’ll get quite a bit of handy content, like stats on players and box scores on all the games. It’s the thinnest available option, but it’s not bad to have the numbers for every game of the season at your fingertips.
If you’re willing to spring for a year-long subscription for $14.99 (there are also monthly installments) though, MLB At Bat opens up quite a bit of additional stuff. It includes video of the “Game of the Day” that you can stream to your device, the ability to listen to radio broadcasts of games, and on-demand games from the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
The subscription gets you all kinds of video content for out-of-market games, which is a great way to keep up on what’s going on all over the league no matter where you are. The app has also just been updated so that it’s optimized to work with the new iPad’s Retina display, so you’ll be streaming some great-looking baseball video to your device.
MLB has also released a new app specifically designed for fans when they’re attending games. The location based MLB At the Ballpark app lets you check-in when you attend baseball games and provides useful little things, like a map of the concourses at all the major stadiums used by league teams. It’ll even let you order food from the concession stands at some stadiums.
Even cooler, At the Park includes some interesting social networking features to let you link up with other baseball nerds. You can create a profile that keeps track of what games you attend and what parks you visit, and it’ll even track the win-loss records of your favorite teams for the games you’ve watched.
All in all, if baseball is your thing, there’s a lot you can do to deepen the experience with the help of an iPhone or iPad. Just keep in mind that MLB At Bat is a subscription service so you’re not unpleasantly surprised. But, for the amount of content on offer, it seems like the price is pretty reasonable.
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