[HN Gopher] Playball - Watch MLB games from a terminal
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Playball - Watch MLB games from a terminal
Author : ohjeez
Score : 171 points
Date : 2025-10-02 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| joshmn wrote:
| This is nice. MLB has a surprisingly nice API for accessing
| things like this.
|
| (I misinterpreted "watch" completely different (post history will
| reflect why))
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Now that is an understatement.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| > I misinterpreted "watch" completely different
|
| (profile bio) > I'm Josh; from Minnesota
|
| Say no more.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The obvious next step is to train a model to turn these detailed
| updates into realistic live-action video.
|
| Of course, the obvious step after _that_ is for MLB to shit a
| brick and shut down the API.
| altairprime wrote:
| Perhaps _not_ posting the "here's how to destroy a nice thing"
| ideas, which makes them more widely known and thus more likely
| to be created by someone, would help reduce the incidences of
| "nice thing destroyed". That next step towards destruction is
| never quite as obvious to _everyone_ as you think. Sure, a few
| people have probably thought of it, but odds are they won't do
| anything about it. Sharing them widely like this is like
| leading a flash mob to hold up lightning rods in a thunderstorm
| and saying "it would be such a shame if lightning struck one of
| us".
| RankingMember wrote:
| > The obvious next step is to train a model to turn these
| detailed updates into realistic live-action video.
|
| Wasn't obvious to me- sounds like you've got an idea that might
| be fun to pursue.
| samrus wrote:
| That video would be such slop. It wont be as fun as watching an
| actual pitch/hit.
|
| Also the fun baseball stuff, the kind jomboy covers, wont ever
| be in the video because its not in the feed
| vunderba wrote:
| When I first read the description of this project I actually
| assumed that it was using ASCII in the terminal to recreate the
| current state of the game...
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It would be neat to recreate early radio, where a broadcaster
| would get a play-by-play over the wire and then announce it as
| if watching it, complete with sound effects. It was one of
| Ronald Reagan's early jobs.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That is an interesting idea. And that sounds quite doable.
|
| Not sure about TOS but would be a natural fit as a twitch
| channel.
| k2enemy wrote:
| It seems like MLB themselves have been experimenting with this.
| On their website, they have a feature called "gameday" that
| animates the game. For a while now they've had a 2d view, but
| now they also have a 3d view that you can switch to.
|
| It is buggy as hell, but neat that you can move around the
| field and watch player movement off the ball. But there are a
| ton of glitches, like players getting frozen or duplicated,
| batters, umps, and catchers getting swapped (funny to see the
| ump at bat), and mixups with mount visits. In time, I can
| imagine this as a great way to watch though. Especially for
| novice players and fans learning the game and trying to figure
| out things like who should back up which throws in which
| situations etc.
| intrikate wrote:
| Why would they shit a brick over people using data to ask a
| computer to generate videos of... a game they already captured
| video of?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"
|
| - Everyone's favorite chaotician
| jackmu wrote:
| this is so cool! was it hard building a tui? i see you're even
| using react in there
| Covzire wrote:
| That's awesome, now if it would integrate with Plex somehow...
| vunderba wrote:
| Neat. I always envision that fans of a particular sports
| franchise use these text descriptions to reconstruct the game in
| their minds in the same way that people who play blindfold chess
| [1] do.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindfold_chess
| grantseltzer wrote:
| 'Watch' isn't the correct word.
| airstrike wrote:
| This is both really awesome and a perfect explanation for why I
| find baseball so incredibly boring to watch
| naet wrote:
| I love plaintextsports for baseball already. Baseball is a game
| that serializes to text very well (and radio) vs other sports.
| Bringing it to the terminal is cool too.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Yeah Im just now realizing how the baseball scoring conventions
| are basically a DSL for a baseball game. There is a
| standardized way for expressing what happens in a game. I
| wonder if this has been leveraged in any interesting programs.
|
| here is an example inning:
|
| K | 6-3 | BB | 2B (RBI, R1-H) | F8
| 72736379 wrote:
| There's a standardized way to express what is happening in
| the game too- you'll often hear on the radio and television
| broadcasts the play that just happened using numbered
| positions on the field. 1 is pitcher, 2 is catcher, 3 is
| first baseman, 4 is second, 5 is third, 6 is shortstop, etc.
| so you'll hear something like "6-4-3 double play" which means
| the ball was fielded by the shortstop (6), thrown to the
| second baseman (4) for the first out, then to the first
| baseman (3) for the second one.
|
| Makes it easy to visualize the game if listening on the
| radio.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| When I coach my youth teams, I always list their positions
| by number. I derive some minor benefit from doing that, but
| I'm also hoping that by having them learn the position
| numbers, it will make it easier for them to enjoy audio
| broadcasts of baseball games. There's a special kind of fun
| in listening to those.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I think we are saying the same thing. This is the same as
| scoring the game they are just saying it out loud. Maybe my
| example didnt pick the most illustrative details.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| How do you differentiate a swinging strike-out from a looking
| strike-out when you can't turn the K upside down?
| royskee wrote:
| Unicode FTW: ""
| dmoy wrote:
| By upside down you mean backwards, yea?
|
| So... [?]
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes it's a 180 degree rotation.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Totally anecdotal, but there are people who literally get paid to
| watch games and record what happens at every step. I used to have
| that job. This is how MLB, ESPN etc. have live updates which
| powers stuff like this.
| re wrote:
| There are also fans who record what happens in baseball games
| purely for their own enjoyment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_scorekeeping
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseballScorecards/
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1lzpwrq/reasons_i...
| /
| https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/68qdm9/people_who...
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I see these folks at giants games sometimes, they usually
| have a little mini golf pencil and a clipboard or something.
| waltbosz wrote:
| Futurama had a joke about this hobby
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I helped someone extract data from one of those old DOS
| personal-database software programs. He had recorded every
| scorecard from every game he went to for many years. Each
| year had its own floppy disk.
| xrd wrote:
| I really feel like this is the only application of AI I would
| want to support right now. If an LLM can take in these fans
| commentary and then add a bunch of hallucinations and
| cultural biases, well, that sounds like pure entertainment.
| resize2996 wrote:
| I've been using these for about... 20 years or so..
| https://www.reisnerscorekeeping.com/
| op00to wrote:
| I love scoring games when I go to a ballgame. It keeps me
| engaged, and it's fun to see how I mess up compared to the
| professional scorers. Did you do MLB scoring? If so, do you do
| scoring if you see a game now, or are you sick of it? :D
| jorts wrote:
| I scored for my son's Little League game last weekend, and it
| was a stressful experience. Mainly because I had never used
| the app before, it was also somewhat tedious, as I had to
| update positions every half inning. I wish it were all pre-
| loaded, as that would have significantly reduced my stress.
| It was nice being the person everyone asked what the score
| was all the time, as no one else was paying as close
| attention to the game.
| n1b0m wrote:
| Has any of it been automated?
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| This was an old timey job of my pop....covered all the local
| minor league baseball games .
|
| My first thought of this app is that it would just show a
| filled in version of a scorecard in person - one of the first
| hobbies of mine
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Lee-rich...
| jackconsidine wrote:
| What an awesome project at just the right time.
|
| I love baseball and I love that the hacker culture seems to love
| baseball too.
|
| I read that part of baseball's decline from the premiere American
| sport was due to its outdated revenue model (strict reliance on
| ticket sales). The NFL in 80s really embraced TV and reached more
| fans and here we are. MLB has been recently way ahead of the
| curve on streaming (MLB.tv, AWS StatCast etc).
|
| I hope projects like this contribute to baseball regaining
| popularity
| spike021 wrote:
| I just wish MLB and its broadcasters weren't pushing gambling
| so hard. It's ridiculous and bringing so much toxicity to the
| sport.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I fully support sports gambling being legal but holy shit,
| the legalization of sports gambling in the USA had such a
| terrible effect on sports coverage.
|
| I have not watched the MLB in a while so I don't know
| specifically what you are talking about but I can imagine.
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| There is an ad for a sports book on screen no less than 50%
| of a broadcast, not including ad breaks, for the majority
| of teams. Either it's an ad behind home plate, a jersey
| patch, the broadcasters themselves reading the latest odds,
| or a combination of those and more. It is absolutely
| insane.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I was just having this conversation with friends a few days
| ago. We do still watch games, but we all used to also watch
| sports news/talk shows (e.g. morning pre-football coverage,
| SportsCenter, and the like) and most of us have stopped.
| Some of the shows are now exclusively focused on betting.
|
| I'm all for consenting adults to be able to legally place
| wagers at outlets that are not swindling them, or offering
| the kinds of loans that could get a person's legs broken.
|
| But I'm so tired of ALL THE COVERAGE being about betting.
| It was more fun when the coverage was mostly sports, and Al
| Michaels had to sneak in the odd mention of what the point
| spread was for a game he was broadcasting.
|
| Even my friends who enjoy gambling don't like the media
| coverage of it. I guess we're not a representative sample.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Yes this is exactly what I mean. Coverage of the sport
| has been replaced with coverage of the gambling games
| around the sport.
| xp84 wrote:
| > Even my friends who enjoy gambling don't like the media
| coverage of it.
|
| You may well be representative; it's just that all these
| parties directly invested in gambling would rather expand
| gambling as much and as fast as they can, at the expense
| of turning off their whole audience.
| svachalek wrote:
| Much like politics, it's been decades since the coverage
| has had anything substantial to say about the issues or
| the candidates, it's all treated like a horse race now,
| who's gained or lost 1% in the polls.
| spike021 wrote:
| Honestly it's a lot like the alcohol ads being
| everywhere. I don't have a problem with drinking alcohol
| but this is supposed to be a sport enjoyed by the whole
| family, and there are broadcasts where the inning break
| is filled almost entirely with hard liquor
| advertisements. Even at the ballpark it's hard to avoid
| advertising for beer and other drinks.
| spike021 wrote:
| in addition to what Jeremy said, some broadcasts even show
| the betting line or chances for certain things to happen as
| the inning is being played (like what are the chances a
| player hits into a double play or hits a home run, etc.)
| specifically for the betters.
| subroutine wrote:
| Unfortunately the future of sports media is ownership by
| parent companies that also own sports betting sites. The
| yearly revenue of the largest gambling sites in the US rivals
| the combine revenue of the MLB, NHL, NBA, and NFL, and some
| major sports coverage media outlets.
|
| Penn entertainment for example acquired Barstool Sports and
| The Score, and entered into a 10-year deal with ESPN to
| create ESPN-bet, for cash and a stake in the company. ESPN is
| now directly invested in the gambling industry.
| basisword wrote:
| It's interesting to watch as an international viewer. Sports
| gambling here has been legal forever and although we get
| betting company ads during commercial breaks (and some
| sponsorship stuff) the US has managed to legalise it and make
| it toxic almost instantly. Commentators and pundits should
| not be giving odds on air (with rare exceptions). Pundits
| shouldn't be giving 'their' betting picks. The problem isn't
| gambling - it's the excess to which it's been implemented.
| spike021 wrote:
| if there's anything Americans love, it's excess.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I get why people say its boring but I love it as well. I don't
| follow it anymore really and if I tune in randomly I feel
| similarly - it seems boring. It just takes some exposure before
| you can appreciate it. The emergent narratives within games,
| series, and seasons is really special.
| jen20 wrote:
| I for one wish it would go further. Despite being in Austin, I
| often can't watch the Astros - as if I'm going to drive a six
| hour round trip to go to every game otherwise - without
| subscribing to some channel which is inevitably only available
| with companies I don't want to do business with. I'd happily
| pay ~300/yr for a streaming subscription that gets me all those
| games though...
| criddell wrote:
| That's my biggest complaint as well. The MLB streaming
| service needs to have an everything tier. I understand that
| teams want to sell rights locally, but figure it out. Charge
| me whatever you need to charge me and share the revenue with
| the local team. Just make it easy for me to watch!
|
| I too live in Austin and I watched more Toronto Blue Jays, SF
| Giants, and LA Dodgers games than Rangers games this year.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Baseball's biggest issue is that their biggest teams are also
| co-owners of their cable channels (and were trailblazers in
| this, with the Yankees and the YES Network). They don't care
| if you go to the game, they want you to get a cable
| subscription that has your local RSN, ESPN, TBS, your local
| FOX affiliate, and FS1 so that you can watch your team play.
| And that's not including games that may wind up on streaming
| platforms.
|
| The post you replied to included this:
|
| > I read that part of baseball's decline from the premiere
| American sport was due to its outdated revenue model (strict
| reliance on ticket sales). The NFL in 80s really embraced TV
| and reached more fans and here we are. MLB has been recently
| way ahead of the curve on streaming (MLB.tv, AWS StatCast
| etc).
|
| I'm _hoping_ (although numbers don't seem to be showing it as
| a huge success as of yet) is that the Apple-MLS deal works
| well enough that other leagues are at least open to the idea
| of a no-blackout, all-inclusive package.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'd happily pay ~300/yr for a streaming subscription that
| gets me all those games though..._
|
| If you can get along with audio only, Sirius has a
| subscription that includes every MLB game.
| jen20 wrote:
| Eh, I can just read the text for that, and Sirius is
| definitely in the company of those I don't want to do
| business with!
| agiacalone wrote:
| AFAIK, the MLB.tv subscription includes full audio for
| every game, including in-market games.
|
| My understanding of the issue is that MLB sold off the TV
| rights to local games years ago to the RSN (Regional Sports
| Networks) and the contracts have yet to expire. Rumor has
| it that around 2028 or so, they will try to rein them back
| in.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5933299/2024/11/19/mlb-
| plan...
| themadturk wrote:
| They're already doing so. There are a number of teams
| (six, eight? something like that) that already have local
| coverage packages with MLB, and Seattle is joining the
| crowd next year.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yeah the out-of-market-only rules of the national sports
| subscriptions is really goofy. I guess they're trying to
| protect the Comcasts of the world who own a lot of those
| regional sports networks where the baseball games are shown,
| because they pay a lot for those deals and would probably
| refuse to pay as much if MLB let MLB.tv have them. But it
| still sucks.
| basisword wrote:
| As an international fan of several US sports MLB are miles
| ahead on streaming. I can access every single game through
| their in-house streaming service. Live or on demand. I can
| pause, skip ahead in-between innings, choose TV or radio
| commentary. I can watch on my computer, TV, phone, web. They
| even had a cool experimental Vision Pro app. The NBA isn't too
| far behind these days. The NFL was good but they've started
| selling their own in-house streaming rights to national
| broadcasters internationally so I've went from their decent in-
| house service to a pretty terrible third-party one.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I always thought the sharpest declines were around steroids and
| the 94 strike.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/4735/sports.aspx
|
| The data shows that the biggest drop was around the 60s. This
| is probably due to TV. The strike looks like it had some effect
| and the steroids era not much.
|
| I think baseball needs more national stars. People like Ohtani
| and Judge, but they are not on the level Ken Griffey, Jr. was
| in 93-94. None of them reach the level of Mahomes or Manning
| either.
| thaack wrote:
| I think streaming is part of why I DON'T watch baseball. The
| DTC streaming package for my local team is $20/month. Baseball
| is something that I would flip on the local team and watch
| after work passively. The value just isn't there for
| $20!/month.
|
| I also think it has a huge negative impact on youth interest in
| baseball. I personally got into baseball as a kid because my
| father would do the same - get home from work and turn on the
| game because it was on OTA TV. How are you getting kids
| interested in the sport if they can't even watch because the
| parents don't want to fork over that cost? Huge ripple effect.
| The RSN's which typically carry a vast majority of local
| baseball games (mlb.tv is blacked out for local markets) bet
| big on streaming and lost a ton of money[1]. They, in turn,
| attempted to gouge the remaining dedicated fans at an inflated
| cost. I already pay $82/month for YoutubeTv. If it's not on
| there, I just won't watch - in turn, I also go to the ballpark
| less and really don't keep up with the local team at all.
|
| [1] Bally Sports (Diamond Sports Group) 2023 Bankruptcy
| themadturk wrote:
| Root Sports in Seattle started streaming this year at $20 a
| month. We haven't been watching baseball in recent years
| because we don't have cable or OTA TV. Root Sports Streaming
| at $20/mo was a bargain, and it turned out everyone in the
| family (Mom, Dad, two adult sons) was totally onboard. And of
| course it was a great year to catch all the games.
|
| And now the Mariners are closing down Root Sports and putting
| their TV on MLBTV next season. I hope they don't price us
| right out of baseball again.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This is great! Thanks!
|
| Years ago, I wrote something based on this same premise, mostly
| just to experiment with Golang:
| https://github.com/jimt1234/mlbcli
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is very cool. I like it.
| alargemoose wrote:
| This is great. I'm working on something similar for tracking
| college football games from the terminal. Right now it just shows
| a List of active games with minimal navigation. lots of great
| inspiration.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "Your Web browser is Ronald Reagan."
|
| -- Neal Stephenson
|
| <https://www.azquotes.com/quote/783529>
|
| <https://hackneys.com/docs/in-the-beginning-was-the-command-l...>
| (PDF)
|
| (Play-by-play...)
| Anaminus wrote:
| The lock file is 12 times larger than the entire source.
| git clone -q https://github.com/paaatrick/playball.git cd
| playball echo $(du -bs package-lock.json | cut -f1) / $(du
| -bs src | cut -f1) | bc -l
| rootcage wrote:
| How can we extend this to NFL or NBA?
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Gridiron football would probably work well for something like
| this: each play has a line of scrimmage, yards gained or lost,
| and a summary of the play (eg: from their own 47 yard- line,
| QB#3 threw a lateral to RB#8 with 3:08 remaining in the third
| quarter and gained 2 yards and was brought down by DT#10). Most
| importantly, there are defined "plays" that run from snap to
| down, which means you can summarize it.
|
| NBA play would be very different and very difficult, because
| there are no defined plays, only possessions. It'd include
| relative locations on the floor (lane, 2pt area, 3pt area),
| list of players who touched the ball, and what the outcome was
| (2pt, 3pt, turnover, out-of-bounds, etc).
| Slothrop99 wrote:
| They have this (with a slight delay) on NFL.com and ESPN. Not
| sure if there's a public API for it tho.
| xrd wrote:
| I think a browser extension could be used to pull the content
| from the live stats stream as a good starting point.
| axbolduc wrote:
| For others interested in the space there are a couple of other
| MLB TUI programs out there.
|
| mlbt: https://github.com/mlb-rs/mlbt gomlb (self plug):
| https://github.com/AxBolduc/gomlb
|
| I also know of NBA CLI (https://github.com/dylantientcheu/nbacli)
| for the NBA but last I checked it was having issues with changes
| to the NBA API.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Would love to see this as a Telnet or SSH service so I don't have
| to install npm for something I might only use once.
|
| EDIT: Nevermind, I found one downthread: https://github.com/mlb-
| rs/mlbt
| stack_framer wrote:
| Very cool. I may just cancel my Fubo subscription and switch to
| this (Fubo has the glitchiest, buggiest, slowest video player
| I've ever seen)!
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Playball: Watch MLB games from the comfort of your own
| terminal_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591070 - Sept
| 2023 (1 comment)
|
| _Playball: Watch MLB games from the comfort of your own
| terminal_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21653981 - Nov
| 2019 (42 comments)
| gregjw wrote:
| I wonder how easy it would be to adapt this to work for
| NPB/Japanese Baseball.
| some_guy_nobel wrote:
| This is awesome. One of the great outcomes of the datafication of
| baseball is the timely availability/accessibility of game info.
| maxlin wrote:
| I fully expected this to play sports streams in terminal with the
| pixels converted to ASCII kind of like passing ffmpeg thru caca
| lol
| canthonytucci wrote:
| Beautiful.
|
| Does something similar exist for f1? Or soccer?
| Whatarethese wrote:
| Lights out and away we go. Max Verstappen wins the Grand Prix!
| gorgoiler wrote:
| One word:
|
| _Cricket_
|
| One of the many standout features of a sport that already
| includes:
|
| - being famous for taking five days to play and often ending in a
| drawer;
|
| - where a major component of play is the nature and timing of the
| ball falling apart; and
|
| - where regular fielding positions have names like _silly mid on_
| , _third man_ , _cow corner_ , and _square leg_ ,
|
| ...is that since time immemorial cricket has had a symbiotic
| relationship with another deeply weird pastime, the art of
| cricket scoring, namely the erudite process of _keeping track of
| the score_ :
|
| https://preview.redd.it/englands-first-innings-scoresheet-v0...
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(page generated 2025-10-02 23:00 UTC)