PHILADELPHIA — In the bottom of the seventh inning, the left-field jumbotron at Citizens Bank Park delivered, in capital letters, a message to nobody in particular: “MAKE SOME NOISE.” Two batters later, Scott Kingery lined a ball into the seats in the left-field corner that tailed just foul of the pole and the piped-in artificial crowd noise obliged, letting out what sounded like a half-hearted cheer over a long foul ball. Welcome to Night 2 of MLB’s dystopian-sci-fi-movie-inspired experiment that is the 2020 season.
It was a real baseball game, that counts in the real standings, but it was also a disjointed smorgasbord of familiar rituals and makeshift adaptations.