They show that discussion of the event happened contemporaneously with the claimed event, narrowing the range of dates that this would have had to have been faked to a period of two weeks in September 2007. Its substantive.

Correction, 6 days

This answer, counter-intuitively, made me believe the video was more likely to be faked. They are all discussing the exact same potentially-faked video - no shots from other cameras; no independent witnesses who were at the game; no interviews with Prado. The discussion was not on the day, but days afterwards. The quote from the commentator does not reference that actual event, making the audio easy to lift from some other unusual play.

Why is it so hard to beleive this happened. I get that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but this isn't an extraordinary claim.

Your edit claims that this video was taken down due to MLB copyright claims, but I just get the message "This video is unavailable." which is inditinguishable from a broken YouTube id. How do you know it is a copyright claim?

Only one was. My point is that a lack of footage from many angles isn't surprising.

Don't get me wrong. I still have an open mind, and would be happy to see some evidence. However, a static balance of a baseball bat is somewhat extraordinary (ref: alleged commentator!), much of the evidence we would expect to see seems to be missing, and the circumstantial evidence suggests it is a simple hoax.

I wasnt expecting any evidence other than what we've found. I'm actually surprised to have found this much. I don't think there is any circumstantial evidence pointing towards hoax. What evidence do you think points to hoax?

I want to re-iterate that all of this is circumstantial, or I would have posted an answer:

* There is only one angle available, even though there were likely to be several television (and a few home video) cameras pointed at the action.

* No-one in the shot reacts, the camera operator doesn't focus on it.

* It is an exciting event, and yet the news reports afterwards (NYT and the baseball score-board sites) don't mention it.

* In fact, I would expect to see news segments about just it, but none have surfaced.

* I searched, but could not find any interviews with Prado afterwards where he talks about it.

* It would be relatively easy to fake. Mocking up a bat is relatively easy.

* Subjectively, it looks unlikely.

* The voice-over doesn't say "Oh wow! Look at the bat!" or make any other reference - just a generic expression of astonishment that could have been lifted and pasted in from another play.

* To date, there haven't been any contemporaneous quotes of people who were there at the game talking about it. (We had a person say they saw it on TV, but it was deleted as an unsubstantiated anecdote. We know people's memories get confused by exactly this sort of thing.)

* The "near miss" example is very different, with the bat never reaching a stable equilibrium.

That new blog entry you have added is a strong piece of evidence - it is from someone who apparently watched the game and is shortly after the game is played.

Re: static shot - I went to prove you wrong, because I previously noticed that the shot width (the focal-length) had changed, but when I rewatched the video I was horrified to realise that I was wrong. I had somehow interpreted the large camera shake as an operator widening the shot. I apologise for that. I agree that it appears to be a static shot, so the lack of camera zoom isn't evidence in either direction. Sorry about that.

Anomaly hunting? Ha! I almost accused you of that when you conveniently found that another shot was missing due to a copyright claim that apparently didn't apply to the first shot. You haven't convinced me that I am attempting that - I hope you wrote this before seeing my arguments above.