Even younger fans obsessed with capturing everything on their smart phones and then social media, appreciate some traditions. Spend five minutes in and around Wrigley Field and you’ll see hundreds of people capturing all of the landmarks and traditional aspects of Wrigley. People love the statues, the marquee on the facade, the ivy, the flagpoles, broadcast booth, the dugouts and maybe most of all the historic scoreboard in the centerfield bleachers. Most visitors are capturing the pictures as if they’re checking off items on a scavenger hunt-almost mindlessly.

However, local fans appreciate the simpler times exemplified by the beautiful, manually operated scoreboard that is better than the videoboard despite lacking all of the bells and whistles.

I’m unaware any ML ballparks that don’t have state of the art videoboards. Most teams do a great job of updating and improving the tech each season. The screens are bigger, pictures have better definition, the information (allegedly) better, but constantly more distracting. Personally, I like the pitch speed, pitch count and current lineups, but the rest if gobbly-gook for the most part.

What differentiates Wrigley’s green monster is day’s schedule of games and the contemporaneous updates for each game. Unlike the digital banners or fixed schedules at other ballparks, there are few tech glitches and in some cases the lighting isn’t so clear.

Most teams that list all of the other pitching staffs in the league in their scorecard or program, list the individual pitchers by uniform number. For as long as I remember the Cubs listed and currently list each pitching staff alphabetically. For example, Ashcroft and Cessa currently on the Reds would be listed 1,2 and so on. However, for the current Cubs game, they use uniform numbers. The starters’ number remain in the first position and the current reliever in the second space. One might know when exactly a reliever enters an out of town game, but you can piece things together if you make the effort.

For the most part, my eyes are averted from the action on the field or dugouts. I pay attention to the occasionally roving frosted male man, the large sombrero, or the out-of-town scoreboard. Even as a youth in the ’70’s and 80’s, I could make a reasonable guess as to who the various pitchers were based on their alphabetical number. Back in those days, teams made fewer in-season pitching, roster moves then they do now. There was less player movement between teams so it was easier to remember staffs.

I attended plenty of games with cousin Bo in the late 70’s and early 80’s and we were able to figure out what was happening in other games by merely watching the out of town section on the board. To this day, I could work my way through the Pirates, Braves and Reds staffs.

I mention this because at last night’s Brewers game, I had no idea about what was happening to the White Sox. At one point, the Sox were winning 3-0 and due to some long innings, I missed how the Rays took a 6-3 lead. It wasn’t until we got in the car that I learned Lance Lynn had a no-hitter through 6 innings and that the Rays exploded for 4309 runs in the 7th inning.

At least at Wrigley you can piece together some of the game without specific information. It’s too easy for people to check their phones. I’d argue once you go to the phone, you’ll find other reasons to divert your focus from the action on the field.