MLB Network is an American television sports channel dedicated to baseball. It is primarily owned by Major League Baseball, with television providers Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications having minority ownership. The channel's headquarters and studios are located in the Secaucus, New Jersey facility which formerly housed MSNBC's studios. Tony Petitti, former executive producer of CBS Sports, was named the network's first president.

Major League Baseball became the fourth major North American professional sports league to launch its own 24-hour cable network. NBA TV dates back to 1999, the NHL Network to 2001 (though not in the United States until 2007), and the NFL Network to 2003. However, MLB Network is carried in the most households of these four networks, as it is available on all of the top ten video operators in the United States.

MLB Network soft-launched on December 16, 2008 with a rolling automated loop of archival programming and promotions for the network for cable systems that carried the network's transmissions leading up to the January 1 launch. The channel fully launched at 6 PM EST with the premiere of Hot Stove.

In baseball, the strike zone is a conceptual right pentagonal prism over home plate which defines the boundaries through which a pitch must pass in order to count as a strike when the batter does not swing.

The top of the strike zone is defined in the official rules as a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants. The bottom of the strike zone is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The right and left boundaries of the strike zone correspond to the edges of home plate. A pitch that touches the outer boundary of the zone is as much a strike as a pitch that is thrown right down the center. A pitch at which the batter does not swing and which does not pass through the strike zone is called a ball.

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[Consider also that the language and its accompanying Figure in MLB Rules, Section 2.00 “Definition of Terms” / “The Strike Zone” clearly seems to define this Zone as an “Area” (not a Volume) “over” Home Plate. The Figure merely “suggests” that this Area is standing vertically “over” the front edge of Home Plate with upper and lower limits (“lines”, not areas) as fairly well described in the text, but with left and right boundaries not described in the text at all. Without difficulty, all parties in the game have always tacitly operated as if the left/right boundaries coincide with vertical "lines" standing “over” the 2 (white) front corners of Home Plate.

The MLB lockout may refer to the lockouts or strikes of Major League Baseball:

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician whose career spans more than four decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors, and baby dolls, Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and violent brand of heavy metal designed to shock.

Originating in Detroit in the late 1960s, Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. The original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album Love It to Death, which was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972. The band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies.

Furnier's solo career as Alice Cooper, adopting the band's name as his own name, began with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare; in 2011 he released Welcome 2 My Nightmare, his 19th album as a solo artist, and his 26th album in total. Expanding from his Detroit rock roots, in his career Cooper has experimented with a number of musical styles, including conceptual rock, art rock, hard rock, New Wave, pop rock, experimental rock and industrial rock.

Adam M. Rosales (born May 20, 1983 in Park Ridge, Illinois) is an American Major League Baseball infielder for the Oakland Athletics. Despite being known mainly for having the ability to play all four of the infield positions, Rosales has also spent time in the outfield, namely Left Field.

Rosales, who is of Mexican American descent, attended Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

He made his major league debut as a pinch hitter for the Cincinnati Reds on August 9, 2008. Rosales was recalled from Louisville on August 20 following the injury of Jerry Hairston, Jr.

Rosales began the 2009 season with the Triple-A Louisville Bats after failing to earn a spot on the Reds' roster. He was called up on April 28 following the placement of Edwin Encarnacion on the 15-day disabled list.

On February 1, 2010, Rosales was traded along with Willy Taveras to the Oakland Athletics for Aaron Miles and a player to be named later.