This column is sponsored by Uptown Cheesesteak Company, located at 114 Broad Street in Kingsport, TN. Mention I-81 Sports when placing an order at Uptown and receive 10% off your bill.
These days in major American sports, change is everywhere you look.
The NCAA recently announced the fields of the Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments would be expanding from 68 teams to 76, for those of you who just yearned to see power conference teams with .500 records make the field. College football expanded the College Football Playoff from four teams to 12, and now the American Football Coaches Association is stumping to double the number of participants to 24 teams. Some think it’s inevitable that we will eventually see an 18-game season in the NFL, which only moved from 16 to 17 five years ago.
Then there’s Major League Baseball, which has made some seismic shifts not in scheduling or playoff participants, but rules that changed play on the field. Heading into the 2023 season, MLB made two big moves by adding the pitch clock and banning the defensive shift. This year, one more big change: automated challenges to ball and strike calls. For all the pearl-clutching about how the humanity was being taken out of the game, the ABS system has proven to be effective and efficient. When a catcher or a batter makes a challenge, the result comes in seconds, and the game keeps on rolling. It’s a vast improvement over the endless replay breaks we’ve seen, especially in basketball, where officials seemingly need to see a play from a thousand different angles before making a decision.
Baseball is my favorite sport to watch. I’ve been to at least one live game in each of the past four seasons — all since the shift and the pitch clock went into use. I’m also one of those sickos who starts watching games when the season begins, and rides the wave all the way through the end of September, and into the playoffs. And I’m here to tell you, the games are imminently more watchable with these new rules in place. ABS has just made things more seamless, and also produced some accountability for umpires who consistently miss the mark (Doug Eddings, I’m looking at you…). There’s also a component of strategy involved, as we witnessed in the Cubs-Braves game in Atlanta we went to on Tuesday. The Cubs made both challenges early, lost both, and burned through them before the middle of the third inning.
For the true seamhead connoisseur, you can track how each team has fared in ABS challenges at Baseball Savant. Fun fact: the Braves rank near the bottom of the majors in challenges won by batters.
Truist Park
As mentioned earlier, the wife and I went to Atlanta for Tuesday’s game with Chicago. My daughter got tickets for my birthday a few months ago, and she nailed it. I got to experience a big-league game from the front row of the outfield bleachers for the first time. If you’re headed to Truist and want a good seat without a backbreaking price, I recommend the front row in left field. You’ve got more room, a little shelf for sitting snacks and drinks, and there’s a sloped concrete area you can lean on while you watch. It’s also right on top of the visitors’ bullpen, which, as a Cubs fan, I enjoyed.
To wit:
Members of the Chicago Cubs pitching staff in the visitors bullpen before the Tuesday, May 12 game at Atlanta.
If you’re headed to Atlanta for a game, there’s some good grub to be had in the Outfield Marker. We enjoyed the Taqueria Tsunami — a Latin-Asian fusion taco stand. We enjoyed the Thai chicken taco and the BBQ short rib taco.
Giant Disappointment
Staying in the world of Major League Baseball, if you’ve not been paying attention to how San Francisco has fared under first-year manager — and former Tennessee Vols head coach Tony Vitello — it… has not gone well. At all.
Through games played May 17, the Giants had a 20-27 record. Good news? That was no longer last in the National League West. Bad news? The rest is pretty much all bad news. It’s not all Vitello’s fault — he inherited a flawed roster that has proven to be deeply problematic. Still, the Giants are putting up historically poor numbers: 92 walks, 12 stolen bases, and 35 home runs. As Sports Illustrated reported earlier this week, those are some of the lowest numbers of any team in the majors, and second worst since the live ball era — which dates back to 1920.
And it’s not even June.
Good luck, Giants fans. It’s gonna be a long summer. At least with the pitch clock, the games will be shorter?