The Good: Bob Dylan once penned, “The Times They Are A-changin”! This past Sunday my youngest son and I set out to toss around The Playfinity Gaming Baseball. I figured it wouldn’t be too long of an outing due to my preconceived belief that this Hi-Tech Baseball was going to basically disintegrate once we started bringing the HEAT! I was thinkin’ to myself, “A baseball that connects, for free mind you, to a companion app on your phone? Get outta here!” I mean, this ball was created in Norway. Norway! A Country that’s done nothing but rowing, skiing, and pillaging the foreign countryside for the last 1300 years! These guys are so good in Winter sports that they’re ranked 1st and are 63 medals ahead of the U.S.A. in the “Winter Olympics All Time Medal Count”. The U.S.A, is 2nd on the list!
They dominate the world in 30 below but what have they done for the world of baseball? Only 3 Norwegians ever played in Major League Baseball and you’d have to look back to the turn of the 20th century to find a good one in Jon Anderson whose entire career was a total contradiction. They Called him “Honest John” but he stole 338 bases! :0) So, What could they as a people possibly know about baseball? Well, there must have been some faction of Vikings back in the day who packed snowballs so tight they could play 9 innings with one because evidently, they know a lot more about baseball than I was willing to give them credit for!
Let me explain, Blitz (my son) and I are standing maybe 50 feet apart as we start to warm up and about 20 tosses in, Blitz is startin’ to put a little “umph” behind his throws to a point that my glove hand was stinging a little. Not to be outdone I whipped a laser in his direction which backs him up a few steps just like I had backed up on the previous throw. At that point I called a quick time out which immediately drew a “Hand’s hurting huh Pops?” from my boy ;0) I laughed under my breath because in a few minutes I was going to turn his hand into minced meat after we got the app synced up.
Once in, I loaded up Fast Throw which happens to be a game that is as much about transfer and motion as it is velocity though we didn’t know that at first. Then later on we got our butts kicked in three head-to-head games because we were taunting each other instead of playing in a cooperative manner. While our mph average hovered around 81 for both of us, we didn’t rack up many points. The games didn’t last very long either but were easy to reset. All in all, we threw the ball around for a little over two hours before calling it a night. To us the ball was worth it just for knowing how hard we were throwing. Good times Blitz!
The Bad: The speech in the game kept us abreast of how we were doing but had us chuckling at the announcer’s accent. Maybe next year we can have them honor Dick Enberg’s illustrious career by having him do the voice overs for Playfinity Gaming Baseball 2.
Summary: Playfinity Gaming Baseball is a steppingstone to what the future of all sports development is going to be. It’s here folks! Either get on board or get left behind. Like it or not, from this point forth technology is going to play a gargantuan part of who wins championships and who just shows up to play. This is the inaugural year of Playfinity Gaming Baseball, and it will track speed, distance, height, throws, catches, transfer time, dropped balls and accuracy. An amazing feat considering it’s their first release!
The sport of baseball is going to grow exponentially worldwide thanks to those who developed this gaming ball! My son and I had a blast, and we aren’t even 20 yet! Well at least he isn’t 20 yet :0) I’m not going to go “all in” and say that in its current state it is a must have for training and developing all levels of baseball but within the next year or two I’m pretty sure “that ball” will be added to Playfinitys‘ repertoire. This ball is one that’s loaded with something children have been missing for a long time. A legitimate reason to go outside and play some ball with family & friends. Oh yeah…… and a shot at world domination!
What Was Once Considered Americas’ Pastime Becomes The Worlds’ Future!
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