That’s why we call baseball America’s favorite pastime. Historians date 1846 as the year when the first official game was played. The Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first professional team in 1869, the same year they won 83 consecutive games.
About seven years later, the National League was founded, followed by the American League in 1901. Two years later, in 1903, the leagues merged to form Major League Baseball, the oldest professional sports league in the United States and Canada.
For as long as anyone can remember, improvements in the game have largely focused on rule changes, such as reintroducing the sacrifice fly in 1954 and mandating players wear protective helmets in 1971, among many others. In recent memory, the game evolved to the point where pitchers were no longer required to throw four intentional balls to walk a batter (2017), the National League adopted the designated hitter (2022), and placed a runner on second base in extra innings and the pitch clock (2023), all of which helped speed up the game and was readily accepted by fans.
It’s hard to believe, but MLB was the last of the four major North American sports leagues to adopt instant replay, which was introduced in 2008, but only at the discretion of the umpire. It was not until 2014 that managers were given two challenges. When modern technology was finally incorporated to help America grow its pastime, baseball purists scoffed at the idea. However, a younger generation wanted MLB to take it a step further by instituting so-called “robo umps”.
A version of “Robo Amps” is finally here. MLB introduced the ABS (Automatic Ball-Strike) Challenge System this season, which garnered good reviews among fans and players, and it was at this point that T-Mobile became an MLB partner.
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“It’s all these things and experiences that we give fans. That’s really important to us as a partner, and we’ll continue to look at new ways to expand on that year after year,” said Amy Azzi, vice president of sponsorships at T-Mobile, during a gathering with select reporters at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, hours before the Home Run Derby. “There are 162 games that we can look at to extend that experience, and I think you’ll start to see a lot of opportunities where technology can come into play.”
The ABS Challenge system gained considerable momentum before being widely publicized, as it was tested in minor leagues through 2022.
T-Mobile’s technology is at the forefront of game development. The network’s sophisticated technology includes 12 Hawk-Eye cameras strategically placed around the stadium, which precisely track the location of the baseball as it passes through the strike zone.
“There’s a very fancy tracking system that has dozens of cameras placed all around the ballpark, and from the moment the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, those cameras are capturing 100 frames per second and all kinds of information about that baseball,” said Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations, at a gathering with select reporters at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia before the Home Run Derby. “All that data is transmitted to a software system that we developed through the T-Mobile network, and that software system determines whether that trajectory of the ball was a ball or a strike.”
Now that the ABS Challenge System is in play, fans and players are clamoring for dangerous check-swing calls to be fixed in games, which is subject to the discretion of the umpire behind the plate or the first-base umpire.
Fans will be pleased to know that MLB and T-Mobile are in the process of testing the technology in the minors to determine if a batter swings or checks his swing.
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“The check swing is what we’re testing in the minor leagues right now,” Sword confirmed, adding that it’s the same Hawk-Eye tracking system that will track the bat as the hitter swings. “So, you can finally, for the first time in the history of baseball, decide what a swing is, right?”
Former MLB stars like Chase Utley can only watch the game evolve and wish they had this kind of technology when they were playing.
“I think it might have helped,” the Phillies veteran said before a Q&A with T-Mobile customers at T-Mobile’s Club Magenta. “I think what we’re seeing right now is that the calls are coming the right way, and at the end of the day, it’s about getting the calls.”
If and when the check-swing challenge is promoted to MLB, Milwaukee Brewers star Jakub Misiorowski has a suggestion.
“I don’t think there should be any additional challenges,” he said. “I think that should be one of the two challenges you get.”
Whatever the case, you can count on The Miz to be a big fan of how technology is helping improve the game.
“It’s definitely good for the game,” he said. “All the information they show on the scoreboard is really good. That type of technology comes back to us, and we get that information, and you make changes (your content) around it.”
