Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

First of the 2023 season

Yesterday I attended my first Giants baseball game of the season. It’s been a while since I’ve stepped foot in Oracle Park for baseball-related activities. The last time I was there was for the annual 10K run last, I want to say, September? Coming out of the pandemic, attending baseball games is so far down the list of favored activities that it may as well have disappeared entirely. Of course it doesn’t help the Giants hasn’t been doing well. Who wants to sit in the San Francisco cold for three hours watching a mediocre product? Not a lot of people.

But when your friend is in town from New York City and asks if you’re free at short notice to go to a game, I had to oblige. Besides, this season the league have implemented a pitch clock (and various rule changes to promote a faster game). Basically the pitcher have a limited amount of time to throw the next pitch. The batter likewise have to be ready in the box to receive. Games that used take more than three hours to play the full nine innings have now been finishing in just two and a half. We can now go to an evening game and still get home before 10:00 PM!

And indeed the game last night felt like it went by super quickly. I was actually surprised when the 7th inning stretch arrived. The game that started at 6:45 PM was over well before 9:30 PM. Say what you want about putting a clock on the game without a clock, but on first experience, I quite like the new rules. The game felt natural to watch as it did before. Hitters and pitchers have obviously adjusted to the new speedier pace. Those of us watching can no longer fit in whole conversations in between each pitch.

It was a sparse crowd for a Tuesday evening game against the St. Louis Cardinals. So sparse that they didn’t even bother announcing the attendance figure. That said, heading to the park on 280 northbound is as congested as it ever was once you get near the ballpark. I did the usual and parked near the Hall of Justice (free street parking, naturally), then walked the 10 minutes to Oracle Park on 3rd and King. That part of the Giants baseball experience has not changed in a decade plus.

Still magic inside.

Baseball is back!

The 2022 Major League Baseball season has begun in earnest this past weekend. It’s just nice to tune into a Giants game on the television during a lazy weekend afternoon. The YouTube TV package includes the local NBC Sports channel that carries the Giants broadcast, so I am setup for the whole season. No more diving into the depths of Reddit to find that one sketchy streaming channel. Completely illegal, obviously. What’s the statute of limitations on that sort of stuff again?

I also get my Formula One broadcast in legit fashion now. YouTube TV carries the entire ESPN family of channels, home to F1 in America. The NBC family of channels carry English Premier League, so I’m truly made in terms of sports I like to have on in the background while I do something else. Sports that I use to have to access via the aforementioned Reddit.

At $65 dollars a month, YouTube TV is expensively priced like a cable subscription. I would never pay for that by my lonesome - otherwise what’s the point of “cutting the cord”? Thanks to family sharing, we are able to split that cost four ways. $16 dollars per month is far more palatable, and an absolute bargain for how much channels are included (70+). Of course, a de-facto prerequisite is having unlimited home internet. The typical 1 terabyte per month data caps simply won’t cut it: one hour of 4K streaming uses about 20 gigabytes. 50 hours of 4K and you’re already at the limit.

So after a historic 107-win regular season last year, what are my expectations of for the 2022 Giants? I predict a team of feisty dogs that grind out games. This is not a team of marquee names and big-time contracts. But the sum of all the parts will be highly competitive game in and game out. Well worth having on the TV in the background!

It’s the most, wonderful time, of the year.

Real life racing

It was a delightful Sunday this past weekend as there was actual, real-life racing happening on my television. The live sports hiatus is finally over as NASCAR made its return to racing at Darlington Speedway. It didn’t matter that fans weren’t allowed in the grandstands, and the people who are there were masked up and socially distancing: the only thing that mattered is the return of competition and the competitive spirit. I don’t even particularly like NASCAR - preferring motorsport disciplines where cars turn more than one direction - but I gladly spent four hours out of my Sunday to watch the 400-mile race.

Racing simulators like iRacing have put up a convincing facsimile during the past month, but as we all found out, there is absolutely no substitute for the real thing. The responses and emotions are heightened because you instinctively know the action is real, and therefore a negative action by a driver have actual consequences. There’s no reset buttons or do-overs here: drivers either show up performing their best, or they’d be out of a job really quickly. Racing games remain a great fun and an excellent training tool; however, as much as I enjoy bombing a virtual GT3 RS around the virtual Nurburgring, I still much prefer driving my actual GT3 on real roads.

It won’t be long then until the other major sports follow in the lead of NASCAR and return to our screens. No doubt those leagues will also initially hold games without attending fans, and for sure the atmosphere won’t be there for the competitors. But for those of us watching at home, sports without fans is still magnitudes better than no sport at all. It was joy to see my father watch football as he usually does on weekends before this COVID-19 situation: the German Bundesliga has returned, with matches being held without live audience.

For me, sports is not escapism, but rather a part of what I am as a person. I’ve loved motor-racing ever since I was a kid watching Michale Schumacher battling out on the streets of Monte Carlo. Motorsports will continue to be something I follow and enjoy watching, either until I cannot physically do it anymore, or the automobile as we know and love today ceases to be (when cars can drive itself). Needless to say then I’ve really missed watching what would have been the beginning rounds of the 2020 Formula One season during this quarantine, and I hope like NASCAR, the great F1 circus can return soon enough.

This past Sunday it truly felt like some normalcy has come back.

Won’t be doing this for a long time, perhaps ever again.