The system, built by M.L.B. Productions and in use since last year, is an archival quantum leap forward for a sport so vested in its history. Most of baseball’s past is lost to the ages, which is why something like the recently discovered kinescope of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series  found in Bing Crosby’s wine cellar  created such a stir.

There is no complete World Series from before 1965. It was not until 1998 that baseball kept the full broadcasts of all its games. Now its archive, up to about 160,000 hours, grows by about 10,000 hours each year.

Access to it has always been clumsy. Two years ago, if someone wanted the season’s worth of diving catches by Tampa Bay’s Carl Crawford, a guess at search terms would be entered into a computer. The results  probably incomplete because tags and search terms were not standard  would be a list of tapes. Tapes would be retrieved from the vast metal shelves of baseball’s library, plopped into a machine one at a time and forwarded to the desired highlight.

On Sunday night, Farrell typed “Crawford,” “diving” and “2010” into a computer. As fast as a Google search, 15 plays appeared in a list, each with a brief description. Clicking on the first, there was Crawford, making a diving grab.

Most of the uses for the system, for now, are in-house and not something that fans have access to. The logging pit  18 work stations, more than enough for a full slate of games on any day  sits outside the main control center for the MLB Network. Some tagged plays are used almost immediately for highlights. But the precise logging allows an analyst, for example, to quickly retrieve all of Alex Rodriguez’s swinging third strikes on fastballs against left-handed pitchers, as viewed from the center-field camera.

Future possibilities are enticing. Coaches could request clips of a particular player fielding balls off outfield walls. Batters could ask to see all of a certain pitcher’s sequences with runners in scoring position. Umpires could ask for all plays at the plate. Sponsors could ask for all home runs hit over the top of their logo. An entertainment channel might be interested in celebrities in the crowd.