I might be the only writer at Download Squad who's excited about this, but baseball season is just around the corner. That means fantasy baseball leagues are drafting now. Like a lot of sports dorks, my fantasy site of choice is Yahoo. Although they've improved their web interface over the years -- by adding drag-and-drop roster editing, for example -- it's still not fun trying to manage your team from an iPhone. That's where a third-party app called Y!Fan comes in.

Y!Fan isn't pretty, but it (mostly) gets the job done. Although it's baseball season now, Y!Fan lets you manage your roster in other Yahoo sports, too. It doesn't support trades or add-drops yet, which is a big limitation, but it can save you some points if you're away from your computer and you need to put a pitcher in at the last minute. You can also use it to check player stats, and the all-important league standings. It's not perfect, but so far it's the only one out there.

Your voices have been heard. And by you, we mean the faceless mob that is the internet, not baseball fans who actually attend Mets games at New York's Shea Stadium. Last week, the team asked fans to vote in an internet poll on the song they'd like to hear during the 8th inning sing-a-long for the rest of the year. And some Digg, Fark, and other users decided it would be funny to write in "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. (Note, this does not count as a Rickroll, because you absolutely know what you're getting if you click on that link... unless we decided to link to something else. Only one way to find out).

Apparently Mr. Astley's pop tune got the most votes and the Mets played the song during last night's season opener. But the Mets have decided that you can't trust anything you read on the internet, especially poll results. So the team will be playing the top 6 songs once per game for the first six games of the season to see which one the actual fans in the stadium like the best. Judging by the booing in the fan-made videos floating around YouTube, we're going to go out on a limb and assume that last night may have been the last time anyone will hear "Never Gonna Give You Up" at Shea.

[via Techdirt]

In this episode, Christina and I catch up with Songza founders Aza Raskin and Scott Robbin to talk about interfaces, the development of songza, and turpentine. Also on the agenda, Major League Baseball gives in and does the right thing, offering free downloads to replace DRM protected tracks they recently orphaned.

Have something to tell The Squadcast? Send us mail: squadcast (at symbol) downloadsquad.com.

The crack of the bat, the smell of the grass and the pain of losing your purchased content to DRM deactivation. In what can only be called the biggest bonehead move since Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Major League Baseball has deactivated a DRM license server used to verify your worthiness to play back video of games you purchased online.

Due to an earlier decision to switch DRM providers, MLB's new content and old content are managed by different license authentication servers. After making the switch, MLB has arbitrarily decided it has no intention of honoring its earlier commitments to fans who purchased downloaded games under the old system, thereby rendering many fans shut-out.

Claiming the full-game downloads were "one-time sales", MLB is completely unapologetic to fans who've lost their purchased content to the horrors of DRM death. Quoted on Boing Boing, baseball super-fan and author Alan Wood writes, "Just got off the phone with a MLB customer service supervisor. [who said] 'MLB no longer supports the DDS system' that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.'"

Shame on you Major League Baseball, this is fraud. We've warned Download Squad readers that buying DRM "protected" media is a crap-shoot, but when issuing those warnings we were mostly concerned about smaller media sales outlets going out-of-business in an ever evolving digital media landscape. This goes so far beyond those fears, with an active and profitable business making a clear and informed decision to yank the DRM rug out from under your purchased content.

Is it any wonder non-drm downloads via P2P are so popular? It's not simply about "free" in the base, capitalist notion of how much money changed hands, it's more pointedly about "freedom", the freedom to do what you wish with the content you've collected. If consumers aren't given options which allow them to get their content free as in freedom, they'll take that content free as in beer.

Besides pumpkin pie and homecoming, the MLB playoffs are one of the best things about autumn. Indeed, when your home team was picked by Vegas to win the division at the outset of the season and they actually do it, the Major League playoffs are even sweeter than pumpkin pie. Enter the Cleveland Indians.

Of course, if you're trying to save money like some Clevelanders we know, you may not want to pay the outrageous sum of money the cable company demands as compensation for television programming--no matter how badly you want to see the Tribe wipe out the Yankees in two weeks. And don't kid us--we know you don't have one of those gnarly gigantic VHF antennas on your roof. For a real baseball fan, this a true dilemma.

Thankfully, it appears that, for those of us with credentials on the Joost video service, not even a lack of TV service will stop us from watching the MLB playoffs. According to Mashable, Joost just inked a deal with MLB to make all of the games, from the division series to the World Series available on demand. Now the games won't be broadcast live as they happen (you'll still need to pay somebody for that), but at least you'll be able to review that bonecrushing homerun Victor Martinez hits to complete the sweep of the Yankees.

Now for the catch--unless you live outside the U.S. and Japan, Joost won't show you the games. Minor details, right? According to Newteevee.com, MLB is so protective of their broadcasts that even replays to a limited number of baseball fans on a P2P service that's still in beta seem to be just too risky. Maybe it's time to re-order that cable TV after all... just for playoff season.

With the Fall Classic nearly upon us, Major League Baseball and MasterCard are giving away a trip for four to the World Series. Entering the contest is a bit more fun than signing up for some mailing list or applying for a credit card. Instead, MLB is letting baseball fans create their own team tribute video using MLB-supplied highlight footage, music, and the fan's own voice, recorded by calling into an 800 number. Fans can even view each other's tribute videos.

The result is a conceptual mashup of YouTube and some of the best baseball highlights we can remember -- like Kirk Gibson's World Series-winning solo homer in the Tigers' 1984 appearance. Packaged with a great video tutorial with baseball talking head Joe Buck in a candy-like Flash object, this giveaway doesn't feel like you're "applying" or "entering". And that's probably just what MLB wants--for this to be fun. Kudos for making it exactly that.

cWell this morning while browsing the forums at QUsers.com I saw a posting on a product called Live Baseball Browser and that it would be released for the Motorola Q soon. I checked out the site for the application and they already had it listed for the Q. I downloaded the Smart Phone version from the site and during the install reading the license agreement, I noticed that the registration fee is for the calendar year and that a new registration will have to be bought each year. I went on installing the trial version anyways to test it out.

After install I ran the application, and after another agreeing to terms confirmation screen, you get a screen with options to choose the date, and the games on that day. In addition to the date and game you can also choose whether to play radio or TV, and what team's broadcasts you want to listen to (if available). On the Q, the interface is a little different than the one shown to the right, from the ivanx.com site, which must be showing the Pocket PC interface.

After making your selections it asks if you have a streaming media subscription at the MLB.com website, which you need to fully use the application. If you click "no" it then asks if you want to try a free sample game. It asks if you want a radio stream or a TV stream. I selected a radio stream, and the audio stream in the built in window media player was not too bad.

After my brief review it seems to be a fairly streamlined interface to get to what you want. I don't know if I would actually stream audio or video of games unless I was sitting with my phone plugged in so I didn't drain the battery quickly. And if that was the case, where I was somewhere I could plugin the phone to charge I would probably be somewhere where I could watch or listen another way. But if you already have the MLB streaming subscription and think you might stream the games I would say this would be a great way to get to the streams quicker than navigating the regular website from whatever mobile device you are using.