As you might know from reading my blog, I’m not much into sports. I never learned the rules of football or had any interest in playing it, and you can tell by my blog’s “Categories” list that there’s nothing “sports” anywhere in it. But I used to be a big baseball (Cubs) fan when I was a kid. My mom was a huge Cubs fan and we’d often watched their games together.
Since my mom passed away, I hadn’t given the Cubs a second glance, but Sandy and her family got me a little interested in football though–particularly the Packers. Her brother Dennis (aka “Bear”) was a huge Bears fan along with her brother Mike, which she, her dad, and her brother Rick are all Packers fans, so there’s some healthy football team rivalry right there within the family. After watching a few games and learning some of the tech involved, I found it someone more interesting than I remember it being.
These days they project the yellow first-down line onto the field… On TV it looks like a painted line on the field, but the players can’t see it in real life. With moving and switching cameras, this still works so great, it amazes me. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though. There’s a lot of new gear used all over the field, but you have to look closely and catch those moments to get a glimpse at it. The on-screen details are another huge piece of tech, showing all the details of the game and/or play in progress, player stats, and just about anything else you’d want to know.
I now wear a Packers jersey on their game days, kind of a ritual thing… If I don’t wear it, they’ll probably lose their game and I’ll feel guilty for not supporting them, and Sandy will blame me. It’s all in fun, but sometimes I just have to wonder, just a little…
This season, with the Cubs in the Word Series, I’ve been watching those games as well, and I’m finding the same fascinating tech improvements throughout, just like pro football. You can see the speed of every pitch in the game on-screen as well as the status of men on base (or not), the balls and strikes on the current batter, etc., etc., etc. I even learned that some players are playing with a “new style” of uniform. I remember all of the players having their pants tucked into their socks and all having long socks almost to their knees. The “new style”, however, seems goofy. They wear their pants long, not tucked in at all, and even past their heels! As they play, some of them are walking on the bottoms of their pants! To me (and to one announcer who pointed it out) it seems like that could cause a problem with gameplay, but there it is, even in the World Series, and everyone treats it like anything else.
So far in the series, the Indians and Cubs are 1-1, both having won one game. We’ll see what happens Friday night in game 3. I’ll be watching.
I had a colleague named Tom whose young cousin worked in one tower. He prayed she would appear, safe. He walked over and stood next to a man who counted out loud each body as it hit the pavement. 26. 27. 28. “It was so weird.” She was never found.
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