The good news is it turns out Marcell Ozuna was a great off-season signing for the Atlanta Braves. I know there were questions raised when the Braves let Josh Donaldson walk, but through the season’s first week, Ozuna has had an immediate impact on Atlanta’s offense, hitting several home runs and, more importantly, providing protection behind Freddie Freeman in the Braves’ batting order.
On the other hand, as many in Braves Nation feared, third base has been a problem. With Donaldson gone and his salary shifted to Ozuna, the Braves have asked top prospect Austin Riley to man the hot corner. Yes, it’s early, but Riley has struggled this season, particularly in RBI situations. The back end of the Braves’ rotation has been a bit unsettling, and I think adding another lefthanded hitter to the bench wouldn’t hurt. While we aren’t there yet, I’m about ready to call up Johan Camargo from Triple-A and give him a shot as a utility infielder over Adeiny Hecchaverria.
You may be wondering how it is I am so informed about the 2020 Atlanta Braves? Especially considering the Braves didn’t finish training camp and haven’t played an actual game?
I do not know how you’ve been spending your coronavirus quarantine, but while I’m stuck here at home, I resolved to use this period to do something useful and productive. So, I downloaded the video game “MLB The Show 20,” and have been playing each game of the Atlanta Braves’ 2020 schedule, every day. This is a stressful time, yes, but at least in one virtual world the games will go on, even if I have to play all 162 of them myself.
Baseball may be decreasing in popularity due to the increasing length of its games, but to me there’s something about baseball that translates wonderfully to a video game. Using “The Show,” I can bang out nine innings in about 45 minutes, and I actually get to be in control. No longer do I squirm on my couch when Brian Snitker goes to the pen too early. Instead, I have only myself to blame when I stick with my starter too long and suddenly find myself in a ninth-inning, bases-loaded jam, desperately clinging to a two-run lead.
Which is one thing I appreciate about video games: For the most part, when I screw up, there’s nobody to blame but myself. I swing way too often at pitches out of the zone, which I’m able to make contact with but can’t really drive anywhere. I also find myself frequently swinging at pitches early in the count, which shouldn’t really matter if it’s a pitch worth offering; unfortunately, it means I’m not wearing down the opposing starters, so I’ll get to the seventh inning and the other pitcher has thrown like 47 pitches.
There are, of course, other problems which aren’t entirely of my own doing. The defense in this year’s game has been revamped from previous years and takes some getting used to; I spent most of the first week running past fly balls and turning easy outs into doubles. As a serial career mode player, I’m also unfamiliar with the franchise mode baserunning controls, which meant when I had more than one runner on the basepaths I mostly just got into trouble. (This explains that one game where I had 12 hits and scored just 1 run.)
“The Show” may not be a perfect simulation, but it is something, and right now, something is definitely better than nothing. Since the quarantine started, it seems like most nights I get the house settled and cleaned and quiet, plop down on the couch, spend ten minutes scrolling through millions of shows I’ve never seen on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and then end up watching a rerun of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Drives” on the Food Network. I know there are more potentially interesting options available than taking my hundredth trip to Flavortown, but I suppose it’s just comforting to go back to what you know. I’ve watched baseball since I was a kid, specifically Braves baseball. Baseball was the first sport I learned about. I literally wrote the book about what the Braves have meant to my development and growth into an adult. I realized I’d been watching the Braves for a long time the other day while playing “The Show,” when I scrolled through the “Classic Stadiums” selections and there was Turner Field, the former home of the Braves, which was built when I was in college.
For the first time in my life, it’s March and the Braves… aren’t there. In many ways, the feeling I’m experiencing is reflective of what all of us are going through right now. The people we see each day, the places we go to, the things we enjoy doing, all of those things have essentially been taken off the table, at least for now. We understand the seriousness of why we are doing what we are doing, but we all just want things to feel normal again, whatever our normal is, whenever that comes. So we search for similar or altered versions of the things that matter to us, hoping they might spur some tiny memories of uneventful days gone by.
What I’ve come to realize is that for me, maybe the closest I can come to generating some normalcy is sitting on my couch and pushing some buttons on a piece of plastic and trying my best to stay back on offspeed pitches. Clearly, I am not Ronald Acuña or Freddie Freeman or even Brian Snitker, but for a few minutes every day, thanks to “The Show,” I can come pretty close to watching the Braves play.
And at least for now, maybe that’s good enough.
Lang’s World: Cooking with Lang →