When it returned, baseball’s increasing dependence on technology was starkly visible.
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The World Series was sidelined by an outage at the Fox Sports production truck, causing the network to lose its broadcast feed at 9:19 p.m. ET.
Travis d’Arnaud answered Escobar’s first-inning tally in the top of the fourth with an RBI infield single that bounced in and out of the glove of Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas.
In fact, it lasted so long that Fox Sports had the time to tweet about it. The managers agreed to continue without replay (It was good enough for Joe Torre as a manager, and apparently now good enough for him as rules guru, too). That’s because major league teams often use the television broadcast to watch for close calls by umpires they may want to challenge. The on-field delay was due to replay capability being lost in both team’s clubhouses.
The issue affected the video-replay system.
A play later in the game revealed how important replay can be. He flied out to end the inning.
Fox Sports blamed the mishap on a “rare electronics failure” in the production compound at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, where the Royals hosted the New York Mets. But this time, both went down. The broadcast then went back to FS1’s studio in Los Angeles where FS1 anchor Dan O’Toole, in scramble mode, announced that broadcast was going back to Buck. This resulted in a seven-minute delay of the game.
But Fox’s Buck, Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci were not heard.
For about 20 minutes, Fox used the Major League Baseball Network’s global feed and announcers.
“For all the stuff that’s happened this year to all of our parents, and a couple other people that have had a few bad luck with their families, it has to bring us closer together”, Moustakas said.
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During the highly anticipated Mets and Royals game, a screen appeared saying “we are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by”.
