Blue Jays and Dial-up
I’m sat in the spare room in my mum and dad’s house patiently waiting for the dial-up to finally connect. There’s a lot of beeping, and only those of a certain age will remember that distinct tune and anticipation of finally getting on to a website.
I can’t recall the exact date, but it must have been late nineties, 1999 perhaps, broadband was a long way off at this point, and frankly why would you need it, I’m only looking at text.
Before the world of the internet, I’m not sure how anyone in the UK found out about baseball. Channel Five may have shown some games but they would have been in the middle of the night and a brief mention on Sky Sports News perhaps?
The internet opened a whole new world for me. I was a fan of the NFL, and was aware of baseball, but never really watched, purely because it wasn’t available. It sounds geeky but the statistical data associated with it, caught my interest.
Back in the spare room, I find out I could watch a game live… from the US… for free, albeit a 2D image but who cares, I’m watching live action!
All the players have lots of numbers and abbreviations next to their names, Carlos Delgado has a batting average of .344, that means he misses more than he hits, that’s terrible. Oh, that’s the best on the team!
I learn so much over the season and am totally hooked. Three decimal places for a batting average? Yes, please!
There is a reported one hundred and twenty one baseball statistics listed on FanGraphs, from a basic, at-bat to expected weighted on-base percentage. This is a very advanced stat for the general fan and when you compare it to football, which have only just started recording assists, you realise just how in depth baseball is and has been, for a considerable amount of time.
If I recall correctly, the 2D image was of a batter in his stance, and then for each pitch there was a coloured circle depicting whether it was a ball, strike or a hit, and its location in relation to the batting box. Once a hit came up, I then had to wait for the text to say what had happened, bearing in mind this was dial-up, sometimes I was waiting a while!
By this time, I had chosen the Toronto Blue Jays as my team, mainly because they were Canadian, and I had a bit of an obsession with Canada when I was younger. They were pretty good too, having won the World Series in both 1992 and 1993 and played in a dome with a retractable roof!
My first live game was in Toronto on the 22 May 2000, against the Chicago White Sox. It was so different to anything I had seen before, the food choice, the organ player, the seventh-inning stretch, the speed and accuracy of the throwing, and the amount of breaks in play.
To me it didn’t matter how long it takes to play the game, I’m not in a hurry, just chilling watching the game with a hot dog and a beer in the sunshine… bliss. This is one of the reasons I fell in love with the game, you can relax and watch the game, chatting to friends, eating, and drinking, then suddenly the sound of ball on bat and it’s a home run.
I’ve always looked to see how the Blue Jays are faring and did lose a bit of interest for a few years, but I found that with the internet opening so many channels of information and the emergence of podcasts, I’ve really got the bug back now.
We are so connected, that you can get information instantly from any sporting event happening in the world. I can listen to a local radio station in Toronto and hear phone-ins from local fans who have just attended the game, in depth analysis from major newspapers all in the form of a podcast, in fact, there are so many informative podcasts out there that I don’t have the time to listen to them all.
Fast forward to today, and I subscribe to MLB.com, watch as many Blue Jays games as I can. On my mobile. In colour. Actual video. Live, wherever I am, I even get updates through my watch!
Photos by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
Article by guest contributor, Ian Flux. to share your baseball opinions with Bat Flips & Nerds audience of 10,000+? Click on the “Write for us” link above.
