04/25/24
April 24, 2010
HDTV is Ruining the 'Neighborhood Play': The high-definition cameras shooting Major League Baseball games are eliminating the neighborhood play, the allowance by umpires that a middle infielder only has to get "in the neighborhood" of second base when turning a double play. "They'll say, 'You've got to give him that,'" umpire Tim Tschida said. "Yeah? Well what do you have to give me?"
Just make the bases bigger. That should solve everything.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 12:20 PM on April 25, 2010
From the article:
"I understand the neighborhood play. But the name of the game is touching the bags," Cuddyer said. "It's not like I can get close to hitting a home run and it counts as a home run. You have to hit a home run.
"That goes for any infielder, whether it's our team or their team, I feel like you have to touch the bag. That gives a runner a chance to break up the double play."
This.
posted by BoKnows at 12:56 PM on April 25, 2010
This illustrates one (admittedly not huge) reason why soccer is not at the same popularity as in other countries. In the NFL they use chains to measure for first down and you can miss by a single link. In soccer, other than the ball going over the line into the net, for the most part 'somewhere in the vicinity' is good enough.
posted by billsaysthis at 11:59 AM on April 26, 2010
With all of the statistics and play-by-play data available these days, you would think the author would have been able to track down something more than the purely anecdotal evidence on which this article is based.