I was very excited to see the “fully” mic’d game between the Indians and the D-Backs today, even though Seth and I had been joking about the Observer Effect all week – the idea that you can’t really observe a thing without somehow changing it. I figured the players would be very conscious of the microphones and that that would kill a lot of their chatter, but I was hoping for a little taste of the banter on the field. Yeah, not so much. The players were so self conscious – and/or were barraged with reminders to watch their *#!% mouth, grannie back home could hear every word they said – that they didn’t say much of anything that wasn’t of a strictly business nature…or maybe it was the game itself that subdued them? Today the role of Captain Obvious was played by Kirk Gibson: We just aren’t doing many things well today.

Still, it was an interesting experiment and we did hear and few worthwhile, useful and even entertaining things:

• Hearing the base coaches talk to their runners. Even already understanding many of the strategies, hearing how these talks actually work was very cool. Steve Smith was especially good at this and his conversation with Shin Soo Choo following the line drive that had him hitting the decks was hilarious.
• The umpires. By and large I think they were the most comfortable with the microphones and, while at times a few of them were playing for the back row, we heard reasonably natural sounding banter and job talk. It was interesting to see how much they just chat with players and coaches in between innings and sometimes in between plays.
• So, can the players hear the fans? If the sounds from this game are any indication, oh boy can they! …or at least those fans seated closest to the field. And those whiney little kids begging for a ball sounded obnoxious from where I sat. Not all of the kids by any means, just those ones.
• Jason Kipnis cracked me up. I get the impression that only some of the singing was intentional, like maybe he often sings to himself in the infield and wasn’t thinking about the mic at first. He looked genuinely uncomfortable when caught, but then did not hesitate to ham it up. And go Adele, making it on to more players frequent play lists – or so one would infer – than I would have thought possible.
• With all of the mics, the sounds of the ball smacking gloves and flying off the bat were a lot closer to the sounds of actually being there at the game. Granted, I can usually hear these things reasonably well during Angels home broadcasts, but this was better.
• While I have no doubt the managers also held back a lot because of the mics, there were a few great Kirk Gibson and Manny Acta one liners, like the Gibby quote I mention above.
• Although the players dialed down the banter to near mute, as the game played out they became more and more comfortable with their usual business talk, and that was in and of itself educational. They’re better at it, obviously, but in calling the ball, calling the plays and encouraging teammates, they don’t sound too terribly different from baseball and softball players of all ages playing the game at any level.

I would love to hear what the players really say to one another on the field. In fact, if I could choose a mutant super power it might be some sort of controllable mutant hearing – hey it would be useful in business too! But, barring a bite from a radioactive owl, I don’t see that happening any time soon. And I certainly don’t want to change the way they communicate with one another for anything more than the occasional exhibition game. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to continue making up conversations for them like I did last season: