Almost all major sports websites have stopped showing linescores when you click on "scoreboard". What they offer, at first glance, is only the R-H-E summary (some don't even do that).
If you want to know when the runs were scored (did the team that won 7-5 score all of its runs early and hold on, did they have a late rally, did they fall behind and steadily chip away throughout the game?), you have to click through to the box score. And if you want to see the linescore for another game (perhaps you enjoy perusing the previous day's games hoping for an odd or surprising linescore), you have to go back to the scoreboard and then click through on another game. It's annoying as hell.
Brief Tangent: I was saddened to learn Jayson Stark likes the Extra Inning Rule. (He was also surprised.) In his explanation, he linked to an amazing linescore from the California League (A):You might think that the official website of Major League Baseball would offer easy viewing of linescores and you could simply scroll down and check them out.
That is some weird, wild stuff.July 15, 2019 Inaland Empire 66ers - 200 000 000 011 114 - 10 10 0 Modest Nuts - 000 002 000 011 110 - 6 5 5
If you thought that, you would be wrong.
I have fond memories of buying The Sporting News each week in the late 1970s so I could enjoy all the major league box scores from the previous week or so. In the decades before that, TSN (once known as "The Bible of Baseball") also published all minor league box scores.
TSN published its last physical issue in 2012 and its online scoreboard likely causes Alfred Spink (Canadian!) to spin in his grave. ... No hits and no errors!
Sports Illustrated is still publishing, but is a faint shadow of its former self. Does its website provide easy access to linescores? No.
All that empty white space is perfect for linescores.
What about ESPN? No.
CBS Sports? No.
Fox Sports? No.
MSN Sports? No.
Yahoo Sports? No.
NBC Sports? . . .
Yes!
All Hail NBC Sports!!
NBC Sports is now the only place I will go to check baseball scores.
My new pet peeve: Websites that don't make a notation that shows a game will be 7 innings long.
ReplyDeleteAnd guess what?
NOBODY does it!
Not mlb.com, not ESPN, not SI, not NBC, not CBS, not Sporting News. None of them even show "game 1" or "game 2" on doubleheaders, which in addition to being notable, also would act as a "reminder" that these games are the 7-inning ones. Sporting News doesn't even show the second game of doubleheaders on the board at all!
And my favorite random thing: CBS Sports says the Royals games are played at "Ewing M. Kauffman Stadium." So they feel the FULL NAME of the guy the stadium is named after is more important than the fact that some games will be a different amount of innings than every single game from like the Mayflower hitting Plymouth Rock to 2019. (Bonus: the name of the stadium is actually just Kauffman Stadium!)