App review of the week: MLB.com At Bat 11 vs. Legendary Harry-Chicago's Favorite Broadcaster
With thousands of new mobile applications entering the market every week, it's becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to identify the apps that deliver the best--and the worst--that smartphones have to offer. Appealing/Appalling is a weekly feature that separates the wheat from the chaff--from games to navigation tools to augmented reality solutions, we cover it all, encompassing both free and premium downloads and spanning all major operating systems. Read on.
(And click here for previous installments in this series.)
| MLB.com At Bat 11 vs. Legendary Harry-Chicago's Favorite Broadcaster | |
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MLB.com At Bat 11 Available for: iOS, Android, Blackberry Price: $14.99 Spring is finally here, and with it arrives another Major League Baseball season (a.k.a. "Six months of abject misery for Chicago Cubs fans"). Although MLB has deservedly earned its reputation as the stodgiest, most fiercely old-fashioned major sporting association, credit baseball's Advanced Media arm for expertly expanding the game's digital footprint across multiple platforms and devices, keeping pace with the changing behaviors of baseball fans while never compromising the sport's fundamental approach or appeal. The MLB.com At Bat application remains an extraordinary bargain whether you're a diehard baseball junkie or just a casual fan: For a one-time download charge of just $14.99 (the cost of about two cans of Old Style at Wrigley Field), users can listen to every regular season and postseason matchup, view live out-of-market streaming video, follow breaking news, access team schedules and interactive rosters, and track player statistics. Personalization is the watchword for MLB.com At Bat 11--this year's edition introduces a host of new customization options, including a favorite club homescreen feature. MLB.com promises a host of additional tools and functions in tandem with March 31's Opening Day festivities, and if the app's Spring Training slate is any indication, the sheer volume of content should be overwhelming--preseason bells and whistles included live streaming coverage of 150 Grapefruit and Cactus League tilts, in-progress stats, batter-by-batter action for each game and a video library searchable by player or team. Sure, MLB.com At Bat 11 is a bit spendy by App Store standards, but it's one application guaranteed to deliver the goods weeks and even months from now, whether your team is still in the pennant chase or not.
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Legendary Harry-Chicago's Favorite Broadcaster Available for: iOS Price: 99 cents It's hard to believe Harry Caray has been gone for over a decade. The veteran Cubs broadcaster's spirit remains alive at Wrigley Field, where his statue stands tall outside the bleacher entrance and each game still features a celebrity guest conductor leading the crowd during the seventh-inning stretch rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," a decades-long staple of Caray's play-by-play career. Another signature: The malapropisms, half-crocked homerism and bizarre non-sequiturs that kept fans tuning in long after the Cubbies faded from postseason contention. Love Harry or hate him, the man was one-of-a-kind--who else could take such sheer delight in pronouncing surnames like Galarraga, Dykstra and Isringhausen backwards? Legendary Harry-Chicago's Favorite Broadcaster is a shamefully half-hearted and completely unauthorized attempt to exploit the Caray legacy, compiling a scant dozen sound clips from his glory days in the WGN booth. Even more frustrating than the quantity of soundbytes is the quality--at least three originate via Will Ferrell's popular Caray impersonation from the comedian's stint on Saturday Night Live. That's simply bush league. Even the App Store seller's page is lazy, with the text copied-and-pasted from Caray's Wikipedia profile. Haven't Cubs fans suffered enough over the past 103 years? " |
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