Baseball is back…sort of. While there are still a handful of Spring Training games left to play in 2025, Major League Baseball unofficially opened the season with the 2025 Tokyo Series. The Tokyo Series, the second time in as many years that starred the Los Angeles Dodgers playing in Asia, also featured the Chicago Cubs this time in a two-game set that sold out the Tokyo Dome. And the action, (if you were up early enough to experience it) did not disappoint. While there’s been plenty of talk on whether or not Shohei’s homer was a homer, if the Cubs were the right opponent, or whether we should have international games at all, there was one aspect of the series that people collectively were in agreement.
The so-called “On-field replays” was met with almost unified derision from the populace when it was featured in the Tokyo Series. The replays, which use an advanced array of cameras, essentially replicate what it would feel like to be behind a player on the field during an impactful play. Currently, these replays use angles that aren’t the established visual language of baseball coverage. Here’s an example:
Since there’s nobody on the field behind Dansby Swanson holding a GoPro, what we are seeing is an approximated (i.e. ‘zoomed in’) Dansby coupled with computer-generated images of the background and other markers to approximate when he is on the field. The fact this can be done in moments right after a play is simply mind-blowing. The creative idea of this and the tech to get it done efficiently cannot be understated. The thing is, when new technology meets something that hasn’t been seen before, you either get one of three options: It’s either revered, appreciated but written off as a gimmick, or hated outright. Here’s what the official Black Baseball Mixtape Twitter had to say about the new replay style:
Now I admit there’s a bit of “Uncanny Valley” going on with the current product, but I think ultimately this may be for the greater good. The reason is two-fold but before I get to that, I just want to say I am well aware that I am in the minority in support of this whimsical take on replays. Maybe because it’s something fresh, or maybe I personally almost always reject it when someone says something like “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” People, we’re not talking about squeaky door jambs here. Major League Baseball is a legacy sport in a time where legacy sports are doing EVERYTHING they can to spark conversations. It doesn’t matter if it’s the NFL taking over Christmas with Beyonce, or Hockey throwing up a World Cup-esque tournament during their All-Star Week. It’s getting in where you fit in when it comes to innovating and for the MLB, this replay style is no different.
So the first thing you have to realize is that the calls of the replay being “visually jarring” may be valid if you’re watching baseball games linearly. However, we have to be honest with ourselves, fewer and fewer people are sitting down to watch a sporting event from end-to-end than ever before. It doesn’t matter if we’re watching condensed games, or if we cut the cord completely and are skating by watching social media clips, there’s less of a likelihood of the visuals being jarring when we’re consuming sports twenty seconds or so at a time. Generation Alpha are highlight-first sports fans and since their social media usage is way up, they watch clips of their favorite teams at all hours of the day. Or to use an analogy, older generations have a “meal,” newer generations snack all day. The idea of a replay being jarring is going to be irrelevant as time goes on.
The second reason I’m on board with this is immersion. When we were younger, we all pretended that we were the superstar pitcher who strikes out the side or the big bat with “light tower power” that can crush home runs. I’m not going to lament the death of imagination here, but the camera angles that put us in the center of the action (quite literally from a visual level) is quickly becoming the norm. People have made “POV” TikToks a trend that isn’t going away, and most action video games are either first person or a really tight third person perspective. These replays get to simulate the latter and with the rise of alt-streams of sports commentary (think Nickelodeon’s coverage of the Super Bowl), the option of feeling like you’re “on the team” is too good to pass up.
And not to mention that there’s a small but growing section of fans that either have a VR headset or are open to seeing sports in an immersive shared experience like the Las Vegas Sphere or the COSM properties. I can almost guarantee you that when textures and background graphics improve, this feature may be as requested as that strike zone box that has become a staple of current television broadcasts.
Hey, I rather do this than mic up players during games. Color me weird, but I’m all about the video game replay wave. What do you think?
