More on Baseball’s Game of Telephone
From Pat Borzi at The New York Times on October 26, 2011, with mention of SABR member Peter Morris:
In Atlanta, there are televisions in the dugouts to help the manager monitor the action in his team’s bullpen — who is warming up, and how ready a pitcher might be to enter the game.
Another National League team, in an effort to improve communications between the dugout and the bullpen, experimented with specially designed mobile telephones in recent years. That ended because the team’s coaches weren’t happy with them, although it didn’t help, either, that players had run up $70,000 in Internet usage charges.
Over the decades, though, baseball teams have stuck mainly to the landline dugout phone.
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Baseball has been trying to bridge this oddly enduring communications gap since its first games. Various techniques have been used: shouting toward the bullpen, using players as messengers, hand signals both secretive and straightforward.
It is an effort that has not been made easier by more sophisticated technology or more expensive ballparks. Regular cellphones are banned from the dugout, and some of the newer stadiums have located the bullpens out of the managers’ eyesight — thus the televisions in the dugouts in Atlanta.
Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/sports/baseball/world-series-baseballs-game-of-telephone.html?_r=1
Related link: Tracing the Origin of the Bullpen Telephone (October 24, 2011)
Originally published: October 26, 2011. Last Updated: October 26, 2011.