Wait until next year

mlb.com has done a grand job when it comes to its online baseball coverage and I’m a great advocate of signing up for it’s audio and video service. Access to each and every game for a reasonable price is good enough as it is, but for those of us who let real life get in the way of watching sport, they kindly offer the condensed game option. In fifteen-odd minutes you get the feel of how a game panned out, with each ‘out’ edited into one package.

However, just watching the highlights of yesterday’s Giants/Mets game, I have become more aware than ever of its limitations. If only there were more hours in the day, and I’d had the time to watch the whole game, either as it happened or ‘as live’. As baseball is all about the ebb and flow, the pauses as well as the bursts of action, highlights will always be second-best. But this particular game, even from just a fifteen minute summary, seems to have been something pretty special.

The first few innings seemed like a bit of a pitchers duel, with Santana and Cain going at it. Then Wright gets a nasty concussion, the pitch actually knocking his helmet off. Santana then pitches wildly in return. The Mets fight back from 4-1 down to level the game. The Giants win in extra innings, a dramatic home run from Molina.

While the condensed game got some of this drama across, it would have undoubtedly been much more satisfying (bar the result) to watch events unfold in real time.

However, until we get a 27 hour day, with three hours for watching baseball, I guess the condensed games are a good compromise between keeping up with baseball, and actually keeping up with the real world. And enjoying the real world is no bad thing.