BallFour

Just to share a fun anecdote from today, since the problem JUST got solved. We have the international rights to the MLB playoffs. Basically just taking FOX or TBS feed, like I mentioned above. However, we're reliant on the folks from FOX or TBS to give us counts to commercial, so that way things look as smooth as possible for the viewer. However, for tonight's ALCS game, the phone number they gave us to dial into... wasn't saying anything. So when the game started, we were flying blind for a bit. I was personally contacting our friends at MLB to get some sort of information. It took 45 minutes, but we finally got a new number. Dialed it in, and now we're hearing counts to and from commercial. They're just little things that can cause big problems.

I do get to broadcast all your ads. SO MANY SPORTS BETTING ADS. And the ones with Shaq are especially goofy. But we actually have a mandate where you can only air sports betting ads in natural breaks in the action. So that means no betting ads in pitching change breaks or in the middle of a football game. Also, a ton of Macca's and Hungry Jack's.

Several! Not sure if you're counting our current on-air folks, but I've met Ozzie Guillen, Eduardo Perez, Doug Glanville, Herm Edwards, Tedy Bruschi, PK Subban, Mark Messier, and Kevin Weekes. I also got to meet CM Punk when he was visiting Bristol to plug one of the WWE shows. The fun thing is that everyone is just there for a reason and doing their job. It's cool to see them, but we're instructed not to bother the talent or be unprofessional. So it's mostly just small talk in the hallways.

Awesome questions! So when it comes to between innings entertainment, we don't really cover any of that, as you know. But the pitch clock (and yes, the ghost runner in extras) have been absolute gifts for the broadcasts. In 2025, ESPN has the *domestic* (USA) rights to Sunday Night Baseball and the Wild Card Series, along with the Home Run Derby. The Derby always goes over time, so that's just expected. But now instead of 5 hour regular season games, we're regularly seeing 3-3.5 hour games. Keeps fans more engaged, they don't have to leave the stadium as late or stay up as late watching the game. We also have international rights to show games to the Australia/New Zealand and Caribbean island markets. So we'll routinely have games from YES, SNY, Bally Sports, what have you... just airing on our networks. We'll have our own ESPN logo on there too, but the scoreboard will be the YES scoreboard or whatever. So during baseball season, it's absolutely huge that we can complete our window on time. ESPN has also evolved and knows that people have their favorite players as well as teams, so the Mic'd Up segment is something that was pushed hard. Wasn't really a fan of it, but if it drives engagement, why not? As for commercial breaks, which is where my job centers, baseball does indeed now cut into the time to tell stories. Each game has a certain amount of promos. Those are the commercials you see advertising the NHL on ESPN or the WNBA Finals on ABC or Chad Powers on Hulu. Those can be dropped at no charge, because it's just us taking away from one product to give back to the current live product. So we'll typically lose all that promo time right off the bat to allow more time to tell stories and things like that. Fun fact - we don't control the clock in MLB. That differs from every other sport we cover. In football we have a "red hat" and in basketball we have something similar where someone goes out onto the field/court and will physically stand there so that the refs won't start the game early. MLB doesn't have that, so if umpires decide "eff it, we're going to start now" and ESPN is still in break? We either dump out of break or miss the first pitch of the half inning. Another way MLB differs is in an obvious way. Baseball always has very set zones of where we look for commercial breaks. Every 3 outs, and on pitching changes (though it's optional to stay during pitching changes after we get our 2 pitching change breaks in). With football, it's after a score, a turnover, an injury, or a review. In basketball, it's in certain break zones on the clock (I can get into those more in depth for those interested). Same thing in hockey. And this is just for MLB. We also broadcast a few Banana Ball games throughout the year, and that's a whole different (Party) Animal. Hopefully this answers your questions!

I can't answer anything regarding potential mergers or deals or anything that isn't public knowledge. Anything regarding media rights and negotiations and things like that. Those things are way below my paygrade anyway. Saw him out walking toward the parking lot once and he said, "Hey Chief." I'll take it. Saw him again a few weeks ago and didn't say anything, but he's doing alright for a 70 year old. Age catches up to us all, but he's still Boomer.

One of the universal things in all sports is that whoever is broadcasting your game (aside from your home team announcers) is godawful, biased, and has an absolute trash production. Doesn't matter if it's baseball, football, hockey, or the Masters tournament. It's the reason why sites like Awful Announcing do such good business. I've been a member of this site for a little over 10 years now. I've also been an employee at ESPN for nearly 12 years. My job involves making sure that the integrity of the broadcast is secure (for example, making sure you're seeing the game you're supposed to see, not black on the air or a completely different show - yes that's happened before). My job duties are two-fold: the aforementioned quality control, and also as a liaison between my department and the folks at the stadium. My job is to count them back from our commercial breaks so they know when to start talking again, and to adjust things on the fly. If their satellite feed suddenly goes down, it's on me to find an alternative. All of this to say, I know that there a lot of questions about the business, about the broadcasts, and about the biases. There are certain things that I cannot share due to information security policies, but I wanted to give an opportunity to answer any questions you may have... because yes, Joe Buck is legitimately a good guy.

Hmm that's interesting. Let me link you to another Graffanino cyberface that you can use TiT to install. You'll just want to load up the roster in MVPedit to make sure that the Cyberface ID matches before installing.

Oof. Buffalo was very good that year. They won the International League and lost the AAA World Series to New Orleans in 3 games.

Looks like these were old holdovers from MVP Baseball 2004 (maybe an EA patch to add them?) and despite not appearing in MVP 05, they never got removed from the LOC file. If you do a youtube search for the songs plus "MVP Baseball", it'll show the '04 cover art.

That's awesome! The initial Henry Rodriguez cyberface was actually one that I created for MVP 98 because there was no mod for him. Unfortunately, my cyberface modding talents are very limited, and I had the same problem with finding a high quality photo of his face straight on. This one is much better.

Glad you're enjoying the Minor Leagues portion of MVP '98!

Best bet is to either get a hi-res photo of the jersey or create the gradient yourself, then use a program like Photoshop to put the gradient on the sleeves. The number font is a bit trickier. For me, I've tracked down player uniforms with all numbers from 0-9 and import them.

Thanks so much for your comprehensive and very generous review! I'm glad you enjoyed the game, and it's always fun to see a rematch of the 1997 ALCS with the new players signed in the offseason that year. A bit of revenge for Mussina too, since he started Game 3 of that ALCS and gave up only a single run in a no-decision 12th inning 2-1 loss AND he started Game 6 of that ALCS and this time pitched 8 innings of 1-hit ball, only to get slapped with another no-decision. The Orioles again lost the game and the series in a heartbreaking 1-0 loss at home in 11 innings. Revenge for Moose at last!

Added a new upload for those that prefer to use the Schedule Updater tool for authentic dates in 1998 so you're not playing a 1:05 game between the Tigers and Yankees on some random Friday.

Just released a mod with alternate menu music for those who would rather have 90s alternative than menu music from previous baseball games.

Done.

I just had a brainwave here. *MAYBE* this is what's causing the missing texture issue. Make sure "Cooperstown Effect" is off. That's the only thing I can think of that would be affecting the whole screen like that. The Cooperstown effect is what gives you that grainy picture quality on classic parks, and that could be why it's happening in a few stadiums. EDIT: Just went into my game and triggered Cooperstown Effect ON and got the missing textures error you were all seeing. Turn Cooperstown Effect off, and you'll have zero issues with the misc. stadiums from here on out.

No such issues here. Was able to start a game with them. The only thing I'd suggest is at the uni select screen, click one down (or one up) and then try to select the desired uniform again after that.

I wish I had an answer for you regarding the camera functions. I'm not sure why that happens, since I didn't really mess with the replay cameras. Could you try the cameras out in a default install of MVP 05 to see if it provides the same issues with all the other cameras besides the free camera? I based this mod off MVP 1994, so if that was a known issue there, it would continue here. Regarding Doubleday Field however, I'm not seeing the texture problem there either. I uploaded these all to a zip file and they were then downloaded to the FTP site. If this keeps happening, I'll release each stadium separately. What the texture error means is that the cram32.fsh file is missing certain things that are needed to show in the stadium. But like I said, I'm not seeing that either.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any errors on my end for Cashman Field. As for the pitch meter set up, go to Game Options -> Visual Options and for camera angle, select Pitch 6/Bat 1 or something to that effect, so that when you're pitching, it's always the reverse angle. The pitch meter should look better that way.

Okay, so answer time! David Arias confirmed. I'll send out a specific fix. Regarding the pitch meter, I used the pitch meter fix mod. If you use Cam 6 for pitching (behind the mound instead of behind the plate), the issue resolves itself. Otherwise you'll need to revert to a previous camera setup. I was unable to replicate the errors with the replay camera angles and the missing textures. Pictures here as proof.

With the newly released mod, I wanted to create a thread so that people could provide feedback, share screenshots, and most importantly to report issues. If anything arises, I can get a patch out there as needed. Hope everyone enjoys playing! As a side note, I do plan to release a few more "quality of life" mods that aren't required to play the game - the updated ages for those that want to use the ScheduleUpdater, a couple of alternate jukebox playlists, and a save file that will allow for accurate DL stints and removing the team picture for those that didn't make the big leagues in order to replace them with editable names and generic Create-A-Player portraits.