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Baseball And iPods

By Al Yellon
Al Yellon created Bleed Cubbie Blue and has been its managing editor since 2005. He's also written three books about the Cubs, the latest is "Chicago Cubs Firsts."

Well, now THIS is a cool idea.

The Rockies' assistant coordinator of video coaching, Brian Jones received an iPod nano for Christmas a year ago, and got the idea to downloading video into video iPods for quick review.

He did this for Jason Jennings and:

... [Jennings] had a 6.60 ERA going into a May 1 start against the Braves when he and catcher Danny Ardoin sat down at his locker to look at his previous starts against the same group of hitters. And something clicked -- not just through his earbuds, either.

"We looked at the pitches they were hitting against me before, and that night we sort of went a different way, and it worked," Jennings said. "We lost the game [2-0], because Tim Hudson threw a one-hitter. But I threw the ball well. And after that start, I really took off from there."

For the record, Jennings' ERA from that day on was 3.31. Which, by Rockies standards, is the equivalent of about 1.31. So we'll just amble out of the way now and watch about 700 pitchers stampede over to Best Buy.

Jones says it can get you thinking about baseball in the unlikeliest places:

"I went to lunch one day with a player," Jones reported. "And before the lunch came, he pulled up video of his at-bats against Dave Williams, [the pitcher] who we were facing that night. And that's the advantage of this thing. You can't really go out to lunch and bring your DVD recorder with you while you're waiting for your food."

Heck of an idea, I think. If we ever get players posting here at BCB, maybe they'd consider posting "Five At-Bats On My iPod".

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