6 ms·

Playball: Watch MLB games from the comfort of your own terminal

196 points by computerlab 7y ago

reaperducer 7y ago
Love this. When I worked remotely, I would frequently have the radio playing a baseball game in the background for company. Now I'm back in the office and can't do that, so this would have been great to have a few months ago. Bookmarked for next season.
jrumbut 7y ago
I was really hoping this would render a small video in terminal colors. Regardless, love it and love that you're bringing baseball to it's biggest new market, unix sysadmins.
- kick 7y ago
  You can do that with mpv pretty easily. mpv "http://SOURCEURL" http://SOURCEURL" --vo=caca Example: mpv "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" --vo=caca OR, for a higher-quality terminal-rendered video: mpv "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" --vo=tct
  - symplee 7y ago
    Do you have a Youtube example of the output?
    - NullPrefix 7y ago
      There's plenty results if you search for libcaca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8g5NGUbDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8g5NGUbDM
  - SanchoPanda 7y ago
    this was really useful, thank you
    - kick 7y ago
      Always happy to share!
- computerlab 7y ago
  Baseball’s state and state transitions are easily serializable, no need for a lossy video stream :)
dcchambers 7y ago
I don't even really like Baseball that much but I love everything about this. I love terminal apps for things you'd never think of, especially when they're fully-featured and beautiful such as this. This has no business existing - yet here we are...and it's amazing.
Yhippa 7y ago
I'm not a JS expert but the code was an interesting read. Are there other free sports API's out there? The MLB one is cool.
- crobibero 7y ago
  There is an NHL API documented here: https://gitlab.com/dword4/nhlapi https://gitlab.com/dword4/nhlapi
  - oplav 7y ago
    MLB API documentation should be very similar. Both were built by MLB Advanced Media.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I believe there is one for NBA basketball, too. Someone posted a terminal program for reading its scores on HN once, but since I have no interest in basketball, I didn't bookmark it.
neighbour 7y ago
Does anyone have something similar like this for EPL football/soccer?
sdca 7y ago
Too bad you'll be missing a lot of the game experience this way, like the roar of the crowd and the banging of trashcans.
- oplav 7y ago
  For those out of the loop, the Houston Astros have been accused of stealing signs between the pitcher and catcher by banging on a trash can in the dugout using a camera placed in center field. https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/mlb/2019/11/12/20961911/houston-astros-sign-stealing-cameras-mlb https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/mlb/2019/11/12/2096191...
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    There's more to it than just sign stealing. The Astros were the team that, allegedly, made "Moneyball" work well enough to win the Last Game of The Season. That they've been accused of stealing signs is a stain on that legacy. [1] https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html [2] https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports-illustrated-world-series-prediction https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports-illu...
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Whenever I'm asked how I managed to do something and want to keep it mysterious, I always plead ignorance and say that Machine Learning told me to do it.
  - LandR 7y ago
    So the guy catching the ball tells the guy throwing the ball how to throw the ball? And the other team is seeing what he's telling the thrower, and then signalling that to the batter so he knows how the ball is going to be thrown? And this is disallowed ? yet stealing bases is allowed? There is a lot more going on in baseball than I thought!
    - votepaunchy 7y ago
      > So the guy catching the ball tells the guy throwing the ball how to throw the ball? Not quite. The catcher benefits from knowing the type of pitch in order to actually catch the ball, but only signals pitch options which are accepted or rejected by the pitcher. They can also huddle if signs are being stolen, but this of course takes much longer (hence the prohibition on sign stealing).
paganel 7y ago
I wonder how difficult it would be to make this work with /r/MLBstreams, eventually even integrating the live match thread from /r/baseball on the side of the main screen.
trykondev 7y ago
This is really neat -- I would absolutely love an NFL equivalent!
jlawer 7y ago
There needs to be a cricket version of this (especially with 5 day test matches). I don't know if the raw data is available without crazy licensing though.
- throwawaywrench 7y ago
  That seems to be the blocker for a lot of sports stuff. Is there a freely available API?
- govg 7y ago
  As a weekend hack you could probably scrape cricinfo - used to do that with a shell script and the notify method in linux to pop up cricket scores.
- unfunco 7y ago
  I've been using SportMonks for football data and they do cricket too: https://www.sportmonks.com/cricket-api https://www.sportmonks.com/cricket-api
  - zouhair 7y ago
    Well this makes me appreciate the NHL/NFL/NBA/MLB free apis.
    - unfunco 7y ago
      I've been using the free version of the football API from SportMonks whilst I write a client, but it's limited to just a few (not so popular) leagues. I intend on using it for commercial purposes in a few months though, and the price compared to Opta and SportRadar is much more reasonable.
invalidusernam3 7y ago
Anyone know if there is something similar for cricket?
holler 7y ago
Very cool! I don't watch baseball but still find this fascinating :D
leg100 7y ago
The MLB seems refreshingly progressive in providing a free API (although from reading around it seems to be poorly documented). The EPL by contrast jealously guards its stats and charges for every tidbit.
- isostatic 7y ago
  My understanding (mainly from Star Trek) is that most of the fun of baseball is the stats.
KevinEldon 7y ago
The developer also created a visualization of each team's minor league system [1]. It's an interesting visualization and a useful project [2] that shows the entire data analysis process from scraping data to published visualization. [1] https://paaatrick.github.io/called-up/ https://paaatrick.github.io/called-up/ [2] https://github.com/paaatrick/called-up https://github.com/paaatrick/called-up
0x445442 7y ago
I've seen it mentioned here that there are free apis ordained by the sports leagues but I was under the impression that this type of live data is not free. I know there has been many court cases around this very issue so the question is; are these apis really provided by the leagues?
- CryptoBanker 7y ago
  MLB actually has two different APIs - their statcast API and their Gameday API. Both are free for non-commercial uses, though there is no documentation available (any more), and any copies of the older documentation is riddled with incorrect details.
aquova 7y ago
Out of curiosity, what are some of the advantages of making terminal apps via JS/npm? I've been curious in making some of my own, but I've looked mostly at ncurses in C or Rust, and haven't looked much at the JS ecosystem.
anthk 7y ago
Back in the day you could watch the Soccer World Cup over telnet. http://www.ascii-wm.net/ http://www.ascii-wm.net/ Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VQQVTS6u_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VQQVTS6u_w

196 points by computerlab 7y ago

Love this. When I worked remotely, I would frequently have the radio playing a baseball game in the background for company. Now I'm back in the office and can't do that, so this would have been great to have a few months ago. Bookmarked for next season.

jrumbut 7y ago

I was really hoping this would render a small video in terminal colors. Regardless, love it and love that you're bringing baseball to it's biggest new market, unix sysadmins.

kick 7y ago
You can do that with mpv pretty easily. mpv "http://SOURCEURL" http://SOURCEURL" --vo=caca Example: mpv "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" --vo=caca OR, for a higher-quality terminal-rendered video: mpv "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQiqBwczB0" --vo=tct
- symplee 7y ago
  Do you have a Youtube example of the output?
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    There's plenty results if you search for libcaca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8g5NGUbDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8g5NGUbDM
- SanchoPanda 7y ago
  this was really useful, thank you
  - kick 7y ago
    Always happy to share!
computerlab 7y ago
Baseball’s state and state transitions are easily serializable, no need for a lossy video stream :)

dcchambers 7y ago

I don't even really like Baseball that much but I love everything about this. I love terminal apps for things you'd never think of, especially when they're fully-featured and beautiful such as this. This has no business existing - yet here we are...and it's amazing.

Yhippa 7y ago

I'm not a JS expert but the code was an interesting read. Are there other free sports API's out there? The MLB one is cool.

crobibero 7y ago
There is an NHL API documented here: https://gitlab.com/dword4/nhlapi https://gitlab.com/dword4/nhlapi
- oplav 7y ago
  MLB API documentation should be very similar. Both were built by MLB Advanced Media.
reaperducer 7y ago
I believe there is one for NBA basketball, too. Someone posted a terminal program for reading its scores on HN once, but since I have no interest in basketball, I didn't bookmark it.

neighbour 7y ago

Does anyone have something similar like this for EPL football/soccer?

sdca 7y ago

Too bad you'll be missing a lot of the game experience this way, like the roar of the crowd and the banging of trashcans.

oplav 7y ago
For those out of the loop, the Houston Astros have been accused of stealing signs between the pitcher and catcher by banging on a trash can in the dugout using a camera placed in center field. https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/mlb/2019/11/12/20961911/houston-astros-sign-stealing-cameras-mlb https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/mlb/2019/11/12/2096191...
- remarkEon 7y ago
  There's more to it than just sign stealing. The Astros were the team that, allegedly, made "Moneyball" work well enough to win the Last Game of The Season. That they've been accused of stealing signs is a stain on that legacy. [1] https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html [2] https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports-illustrated-world-series-prediction https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports-illu...
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Whenever I'm asked how I managed to do something and want to keep it mysterious, I always plead ignorance and say that Machine Learning told me to do it.
- LandR 7y ago
  So the guy catching the ball tells the guy throwing the ball how to throw the ball? And the other team is seeing what he's telling the thrower, and then signalling that to the batter so he knows how the ball is going to be thrown? And this is disallowed ? yet stealing bases is allowed? There is a lot more going on in baseball than I thought!
  - votepaunchy 7y ago
    > So the guy catching the ball tells the guy throwing the ball how to throw the ball? Not quite. The catcher benefits from knowing the type of pitch in order to actually catch the ball, but only signals pitch options which are accepted or rejected by the pitcher. They can also huddle if signs are being stolen, but this of course takes much longer (hence the prohibition on sign stealing).

paganel 7y ago

I wonder how difficult it would be to make this work with /r/MLBstreams, eventually even integrating the live match thread from /r/baseball on the side of the main screen.

trykondev 7y ago

This is really neat -- I would absolutely love an NFL equivalent!

jlawer 7y ago

There needs to be a cricket version of this (especially with 5 day test matches). I don't know if the raw data is available without crazy licensing though.

throwawaywrench 7y ago
That seems to be the blocker for a lot of sports stuff. Is there a freely available API?
govg 7y ago
As a weekend hack you could probably scrape cricinfo - used to do that with a shell script and the notify method in linux to pop up cricket scores.
unfunco 7y ago
I've been using SportMonks for football data and they do cricket too: https://www.sportmonks.com/cricket-api https://www.sportmonks.com/cricket-api
- zouhair 7y ago
  Well this makes me appreciate the NHL/NFL/NBA/MLB free apis.
  - unfunco 7y ago
    I've been using the free version of the football API from SportMonks whilst I write a client, but it's limited to just a few (not so popular) leagues. I intend on using it for commercial purposes in a few months though, and the price compared to Opta and SportRadar is much more reasonable.

invalidusernam3 7y ago

Anyone know if there is something similar for cricket?

holler 7y ago

Very cool! I don't watch baseball but still find this fascinating :D

leg100 7y ago

The MLB seems refreshingly progressive in providing a free API (although from reading around it seems to be poorly documented). The EPL by contrast jealously guards its stats and charges for every tidbit.

isostatic 7y ago
My understanding (mainly from Star Trek) is that most of the fun of baseball is the stats.

KevinEldon 7y ago

The developer also created a visualization of each team's minor league system [1]. It's an interesting visualization and a useful project [2] that shows the entire data analysis process from scraping data to published visualization. [1] https://paaatrick.github.io/called-up/ https://paaatrick.github.io/called-up/ [2] https://github.com/paaatrick/called-up https://github.com/paaatrick/called-up

0x445442 7y ago

I've seen it mentioned here that there are free apis ordained by the sports leagues but I was under the impression that this type of live data is not free. I know there has been many court cases around this very issue so the question is; are these apis really provided by the leagues?

CryptoBanker 7y ago
MLB actually has two different APIs - their statcast API and their Gameday API. Both are free for non-commercial uses, though there is no documentation available (any more), and any copies of the older documentation is riddled with incorrect details.

aquova 7y ago

Out of curiosity, what are some of the advantages of making terminal apps via JS/npm? I've been curious in making some of my own, but I've looked mostly at ncurses in C or Rust, and haven't looked much at the JS ecosystem.

anthk 7y ago

Back in the day you could watch the Soccer World Cup over telnet. http://www.ascii-wm.net/ http://www.ascii-wm.net/ Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VQQVTS6u_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VQQVTS6u_w