MLB Bans Apple Watch (Updated)
Major League Baseball bans smartphones in the dugout. …
However, the Kansas City Star’s Andy McCullough took to Twitter to declare that [manager Ned] Yost had been told not to wear his Apple Watch during games.
…Yost told McCullough: “When you’re away from your phone, all it is is a watch.” And, some might say, not a terribly good one.
Yost insists his phone isn’t in his pocket in the dugout, hence rendering the Watch no more than its name.
Major League Baseball did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.
A secondary irony is that Yost actually got the Watch from MLB as a gift for being the American League manager in the All-Star Game. He seems quite keen on it.
It’s nice to see Bud Selig’s legacy of idiotic nonsense live on under the new leadership of Major League Baseball.
This ban has the potential to be especially unfortunate, however, as the fitness aspect of Apple Watch could actually help players and their coaches learn more about how to properly train and fuel for primetime performance, especially once watchOS 2 launches with full developer access to the multitude of activity and movement sensors inside.
Pitchers, for example, could get instant feedback on their form and how it relates to pitch velocity and break, while batters could use Apple Watch to to gauge and evaluate bat speed. I can even see umpires using the wearable (via voice or gesture input) to record balls and strikes, relegating the classic old clicker to the dustbin of baseball history.
It took MLB about a decade to get on board with instant replay. Let’s hope it takes them considerably less time to realize that there’s no reason not to let coaches and players use Apple Watch on the baseball diamond, and that the device could actually help make the league’s product even better.
Update: After earlier refusing comment, it looks like Major league Baseball finally did a little basic research and is now saying that Apple Watch is, in fact, not banned from the dugout and field of play. Now if MLB would only quit worrying about PEDs so I could watch mutants crank out 80 home runs a year, they might get some of my money.