Last week, Dan Caeser of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a proposal by Fox Sports Midwest to experiment with the practice of interviewing players during Major League Baseball games had been kiboshed before getting past the discussion stage. 

Not surprising, when you consider that the world of professional baseball is typically less enthusiastic regarding newfangled ideas, zany or not. But as MLB continues to lose market share to the National Football League, you have to wonder if they're only hurting themselves by refusing to embrace technology in order to make game broadcasts more appealing to larger audiences.

In this case, they had a chance to make the players more accessible while adding a new element to a slow game.

All Times Eastern

College Football
College Football Live -- ESPN, 3:30 p.m.

College Softball
Women's College World Series, Oklahoma City, OK
Nebraska vs. Washington -- ESPN2, noon
Tennessee vs. Florida -- ESPN, 2:30 p.m.
Arizona State vs. Texas -- ESPN2, 7 p.m.
Michigan vs. Oklahoma -- ESPN2, 9:30 p.m.

Women's College World Series Postgame Show -- ESPNU, 11:30 p.m.

On today's edition of Joe & Evan on WFAN in New York, Mike Francesa broke into the broadcast to break the story that the New York Rangers had fired coach John Tortorella. ESPN then did what ESPN does when a competitor breaks a big story: credits "sources", and doesn't name the source. I thought that policy was supposed to be changing.

Anyway, after ESPN aired the report, Francesa went on the warpath.

MASN's Bob Carpenter is the play-by-play voice of the Washington Nationals. Carpenter is also not impressed with the local fan base. On Tuesday, he went on 106.7 The Fan to discuss his thoughts.

“Well, I think there are times when we’re sitting up in the booth saying, ‘Everybody get up, get up,’ most notably during the Strasburg game on Sunday. In the seventh inning he struck out the first two guys, and then when Laynce Nix came up to bat, everybody was just sitting on their hands. With one strike a few people started clapping; two strikes some more people started clapping. And maybe by the time that at-bat ended a couple hundred people were standing. There should have been 30,000 people standing.”

AA Translation: The fans have no idea what's going on, so why are they here?

Joining an already crowded field, ESPN Radio has announced it will begin carrying Sunday afternoon NFL games starting this fall. Because the NFL allows teams to sell their out-of-market rights to syndicators, ESPN signed five teams, the Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers.

ESPN Radio joins Compass Media Networks, Dial Global and Sports USA in providing national NFL Sunday afternoon radio broadcasts. ESPN's games will not affect the local broadcasts. If you live in Pittsburgh, you'll still hear the Steelers on WDVE and WBGG. ESPN Radio's broadcast of the Steelers will be blacked out in the local market and the same if the network airs a Patriots game, Boston would be blacked out from hearing the broadcast.

In addition, ESPN Radio's broadcasts will not be streamed. The only way to listen will be through your radio set.

The UFC has swapped a head coach due to injury for just the second time in the history of The Ultimate Fighter. The 18th season, premiering in the fall on Fox Sports One, was scheduled to pit womens bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey against #1 contender Cat Zingano after Zingano beat Miesha Tate last month. However, when filming began on Tuesday, Tate was there and Zingano wasn't.

What happened was that Zingano blew her knee out while training (and later tweeted a picture of her recovery in the hospital after surgery), and that the UFC immediately reached out to Tate to replace her. Tate and Rousey have a history of verbal sparring, and they have a history in the cage too after Rousey armbarred Tate in the first round of their fight last March to win the Strikeforce womens bantamweight title.

The playoffs aren't just a time for the teams to shine, what about the announcers!  That's what we're here to talk about at least.  With the NBA Playoffs now moving through the Conference Finals, we take a look at 5 personalities we'd like to see featured more prominently on ESPN and TNT's NBA coverage throughout the postseason and beyond...

Editorial Note:  We have received a note from Sportsnet telling us that the account was hacked and the tweets have been deleted. You'll have to resort to finding porn links on your own now. They've issued an apology on Twitter. You can find a full list of the tweets here.

The sports media world has been connected to the porn world in a lot of odd ways over the years, from Florida Times-Union writer Vito Stellino accidentally tweeting a porn link instead of a link to a newspaper piece to Bill Plaschke's discussion of his porn-viewing habits on a sports radio show to Miami radio host Dan Sileo tweeting he wanted to see Erin Andrews in porn to the ongoing coverage of Taylor Stevens at hockey games. Tuesday might have seen one of the weirdest ones yet, though. Apparently Rogers Sportsnet's HockeyCentral Twitter feed (which has over 15,000 followers!) has been tweeting nothing but suggestive, spammy sex invitations since Saturday...and no one noticed until they sent a particularly graphic one to Sporting News hockey writer Jesse Spector, who promptly pointed it out to the world. It's obvious the account's been hacked (an actually valid excuse for once!), but what's stunning is how no one at Sportsnet appears to be paying any attention to it. 41 minutes after that tweet to Spector, the tweet still existed, as did the four days of archived spam messages. Here's a compilation of some of the best (full Storify feed of all the messages available here):

The National Football League has confirmed that next year's Draft will indeed take place two weeks later than usual. The league's second-biggest annual event will be held once again at Radio City Music Hall in New York, but on May 8, 9 and 10, rather than April 24-26. 

"The decision was made after discussions with club personnel and key NFL business partners," the league wrote in a press release issued Tuesday. "No decision has been made regarding the dates of the NFL Draft in 2015 and beyond. A variety of alternatives are being explored, teams were told, including holding the Draft at Radio City or at other locations, either in the New York area or in other cities."

All Times Eastern

College Football
College Football Live -- ESPN, 3:30 p.m.

College Frisbee
USA Ultimate College Championship: Men -- ESPNU, 8 p.m.
USA Ultimate College Championship: Women -- ESPNU, 9 p.m.

College Softball
Women's College World Series Press Conference -- ESPNU, 2 p.m. & 4 p.m.

Golf
Memorial Honoree Ceremony -- Golf Channel, 3:30 p.m.
On the Range: Memorial Tournament -- Golf Channel, 8 p.m.