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With the game comes the gear, as technology advances into the 21st century so does technological baseball products. There are some extremely interesting baseball products that are being produced year after year. From baseball gear, to protection, to improving your swing, protecting equipment and memorabilia, the coming years promise great technological advances and some old favorites. Each praised for the high quality, competitive pricing, and innovative designs. Here is a rundown on some of the products that you can expect to see now and in the future.
Major League Baseball is advancing into the digital age by testing and using technologies to assist in helping teams, umpires, and individual players achieve optimum performance. Take for example the Umpire Information System (UIS) that tracks the baseball from the pitcher's hand all the way until it crosses the plate. This innovative product borrows technology from the United States military missile tracking devices, monitoring pitch location and trajectory that the umpire holds on a laptop computer. Then there is the SportMaster Pro device that works in tracking pitch- by- pitch and handles databases of the pitchers, batter performance, and types of pitches thrown. This handy little gadget operates by the use of a touch-screen tablet and is light weight and durable. An oldie- but- goody is the Digital Scout, first deemed to be the official handheld statistical software in 2002. This software enables both coaches and fans to track statistical and scouting data on a handheld device that uses point -and-touch technology. Using the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) as its platform this software is great for collecting player and team performance and even report printing.
But with everything that computers can do, baseball purists argue that technology takes from the human aspect of the game. While others say that it only enhances statistical data and adds accuracy and efficiency in performance monitoring. Which ever way you lean technological advances in baseball are an asset that allows teams to organize their information without any the real threat of replacing managers, coaches, scouts, or players by computers.
The ever popular video analysis adds that special aspect of real-time playback and the ability to review from many different angles the player's style or techniques. Panasonic had developed a video coaching system with the capacity to archive 400 hours or more of video used by coaches to search, view, and compare players. It's going to be very interesting to watch and wait to see what we can think of next.
