Major League Baseball Is Allowing You to Cheer and Clap from Home

Sports are FINALLY making a comeback. Opening Day for Major League Baseball is tomorrow, and while you can't be there in person, you can still root for your team...virtually.

MLB has developed a new interactive way where you can cheer, boo, clap, and yell from the comfort of your own home. Here's the cool part though - scoreboard operators at the ballparks will receive a live interface reflecting fan reaction, allowing the operator to adjust the type of artificial fan noise pumped to empty stadiums.

So let's say that a player on the St. Louis Cardinals hits a homer and everyone at home cheers, the stadium will erupt with cheers with the push of a button.

Unfortunately, there is a downside. Let's say the umpire makes a bad call, your natural reaction will be to boo. MLB won't supply boos at all. Doesn't really make sense to me, if their main goal is to make it feel like more of a live game with a crowd. ESPN says In the event that there is a lot of booing, it would just be ratcheted down to be very quiet."

This feature is still fairly new, so hopefully one day down the line they will add booing. The interactive feature will certainly grow over time. According to ESPN,

Expect the online fan interactivity to evolve over the course of the season. Teams eventually will be able to stream their prerecorded, between-inning entertainment features -- such as mascot races, hat races or Beat the Freeze in Atlanta -- through the fan-interactive feature.

 

This new feature will be available through the MLB website, the Gameday app, and through social media links. So get ready to have some fun with the return of baseball!

(ESPN)