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Learn the mental part of defense with Baseball Academics
Growing up I learned to play baseball the same way millions of youngsters have learned and continue to learn, by playing the game. The most difficult part of learning the game was the mental part. Hitting, catching, and throwing the ball are physical efforts that you can master through repetition. What to do in certain situations while on defense has to be taught and learned through study. That takes time and seldom is there enough practice time to teach all aspects of that part of the game. Baseball Academics offers youth coaches and fathers a way to expose their charges to all kinds of defensive situations without having to try and duplicate them on the field. This free universal app requires iOS 7.0 or later. A premium upgrade with a monthly subscription will be added soon. More on that in a bit. Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost was involved in the development of the app. Users choose one of the nine defensive positions and the app offers a sequence of baseball situations for the user to decide where he should throw the ball once it is hit to him. These situations will vary according to how many outs in the inning, where and how many baserunners are on base. For example if you are the shortstop, the game is scoreless in the fourth inning with a runner on third and less than two outs where do you throw, home or first? Each training session runs thirty seconds and the aim is for the user to make decisions in as many situations as you can during that time. Users will see the diamond with the runners and tap the base they think is the right one. To master the exercise users need to think quickly just like in a real game. After you finish the sequence you can check to find out how many you got correct and how long it took you to decide. The Premium addition will be released by the end of February. In this edition of Baseball Academics, users will be able to advance from the first level up to level seven. As the user advances the situations they face change. In addition to how many runners and where they are, users will also have to figure in what inning the game is in and what the current score is. These factors can often change the decision players have to make. For a pitcher in level 7, there are almost 12,000 different scenarios possible. In the Premium version, players receive a Baseball Academic Rating or BAR. The rating is a compilation of the users' accuracy and speed of response. The upgrade carries a US$10 per month subscription fee. According to developers they may launch another method to advance through to higher levels for a single purchase but that version will not track and record a user's performance. The premium version does offer that service. The goal is for coaches, college recruiters and even professional scouts to be able to use this data in evaluating younger players who want to play in college or become professionals. It also will help local coaches track the development of their players. The developers want to establish a standard so users can see how they rank against comparable age players locally and around the country. The overall concept and execution of Baseball Academics is right on target for teaching young baseball players to think about situations and be prepared when they field a batted ball. The developers goal of setting a defensive standard for comparing players is a tough one to get everyone to accept but is worth their efforts. The free version of Baseball Academics can be useful to all young players and is worth a look. The Premium version as it stands now with its US$10 a month fee is aimed at serious players, those that hope to advance to be good high school and college players, or even have aspirations of playing professionally. Overall I think the app offers a unique approach and is one that coaches and parents should consider if their youngsters want to play baseball at a high level.
New BattleBlock Theater video throws a little surprise party
It's been a while since we last saw The Behemoth's Battleblock Theater in action, so if you're forgetting all of the pertinent deets, let us remind you: The game, by the creators of XBLA superhit Castle Crashers, throws a few players with strangely-shaped heads into a theater run by cats and tasks them with navigating a maze of traps and troubles for the cats' presumed entertainment. You can see some of that entertainment in this brand-new video, which features Prisoner 10321 and the game's co-op "throwing" mechanic, which allows players to launch their frienemies across gaps, into portal-like devices ... or into spikes and pits, if they happen to not be so fond of them at a given moment. The official Behemoth blog says there's complexity here, too: you'll go farther when both characters are facing the same way, or not as far if they're facing apart. And while players can slide tackle each other while fighting, the throw move can cancel that out, blocking the slide and instead sending the slider into danger. We tell you that now so that when it happens in the game, you're not actually thrown for the proverbial loop.
Ball-throwing robot seal has a talent for basketball, embarrassing humans (video)
You pick up your first tan leather roundball at the age of 9, you practice religiously for a decade before you can even feel worthy of calling yourself a basketball player, and then you find a video online of a robotic seal that can shoot better than you after just a few weeks in the lab. Yep, some Taiwanese know-it-alls have put together a robo-seal that converts 99 percent of shots (admittedly with a toy ball launched at a toy hoop) within a three-meter range. It's basically just an articulating arm with stereo vision for some good old depth perception, but it's sophisticated enough to maintain its killer accuracy even if the target is moved from its spot. That's more lethal that Shaq or Karl Malone's elbows ever were. Video's after the break, skip to the 1:05 mark if you don't care about the details of how it's done.
Introducing the iPod ninja
We here at TUAW fortunately passed on reporting the obviously fake story of Steve Jobs being denied access to Japan because of ninja stars he was reportedly carrying in his luggage. But we did like this fake Apple page from the folks at Scoopertino, featuring the iPod ninja, a brand new throwing star-shaped iPod. If Steve was carrying around ninja stars (and he wasn't), maybe he was just testing a more weaponized iPod prototype. For more yuks, be sure to read on about the "death grip" issue ("If you hold iPod ninja in a certain way, you may require immediate medical care."), and I like the fact that sharing music with the ninja is easy -- just wing it across the room at whoever you want to listen in. For just $149 for the 8GB model, Jobs may have something here with this new ninja model -- his fake Japanese dismissal was not in vain! [via Cult of Mac]
iPod tossed 154 yards by an Olympic thrower
Roald Bradstock is a champion javelin thrower, but lately he's been throwing more than that, including an egg, a golf ball, and a soccer ball. You know when people start breaking random things in creative ways, an Apple product will show up. Sure enough, in the video above (turn the sound down, the wind noise is horrendous), Roald tosses an iPod a football field and a half.There's no reason why he should do this, but it looks like Apple expected this might happen some day -- despite a mess of mud and grass, the iPod is apparently no worse for the wear. You might say it's silly, you might say it's not impressive, but then again: could you do it?And if you do, could you post it on YouTube, too?[via Macenstein]
Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships draws frustrated cellphone owners from across the globe
Although no records were broken, this year's Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships went off successfully, with one 38 year old engineer and former potato thrower called Tommi Huotari causing a buzz for throwing a cell only meters short of the recently attained 95 meter record setting throw: "surprisingly, a potato flies further," he said. Tommi should know better than to compare a cellphone to a spud. For a fair comparison, he should at least try flinging a bar of Chocolate.[Via textually]
Finn throws to win at World Cellphone Throwing championship
This year's Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships have come and gone, friends, and we're pleased to report to you the winningest of the cellphone throwers that came from the world over to test their metal tossing mettle. Second place in the freestyle event went to Dutchman Elie Rusthoven, who was almost disqualified for throwing his phone out of bounds, but mustered a silver by performing a phone juggling act that won over the judges (seriously, we can't make this stuff up). But it was a gentleman by the name of Lassi Etelatalo, a Finnish javelin thrower, that lobbed his Nokia to victory at a distance of 89m, or about 291 feet -- just shy of the lengthy of one football field, and plenty enough to crush Ville Piippo's standing record of 82.55 meters. (First place in the women's event went to Eija Laakso, who tossed hers 50.83 meters.) Go long man, real long -- like, Naomi Campbell long. More pics after the break.[Via Reuters]
