Baseball is back, and judging by the rankings, fans are happy, even if the season starts in mid-summer.
But this is not exactly what baseball fans know and love.
In the COVID-19 era, stadiums are mostly empty as fans are unable to attend games in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The cuts took the fan’s place, and while they look a little creepy, you soon get used to it. Fans of the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics can even purchase a cropped image to be placed in the stands. If your court is hit by a dirty ball in an A game, the team will mail the ball to you, according to The Chronicle.
But the lifeless cuts don’t budge, so in the CGI era, Fox Sports decided to go one step further with computer-generated fans in the stands, and reactions so far haven’t been positive.
Complaints on Twitter range from “it just looks bad” to “distracting,” mainly due to Fox Sports ‘poor implementation, like an’ 80s science fiction movie with bad special effects (hey, Fox, maybe involving ILM ) or a baseball game from PlayStation or Xbox.
And if you hate wave in baseball games, then you will really hate computer generated wave in baseball game.
While it’s great that Tom Hanks voices a seller in A’s games without fans, it’s probably not a good idea to have a CGI Tom Hanks seen selling hot dogs in A’s games.
Matthew Tom is editor of the SFGATE home page. Email: [email protected].
