Something Is Wrong with This Screenshot

Tonight, as I was watching my beloved Phillies take on the Marlins at Sun Life Stadium I noticed something awry with MLB.com’s normally excellent Gameday application.

I call the attention of the NotGraphs jury to the below screencap:

Under most circumstances, I find Gameday to be an fantastic way to experience the game without actually watching it. The artistic rendering of the scenery, the batter, and the strikezone assist the user in constructing a mental image of what is taking place on the field.

But I am a stickler for verisimilitude. And tonight, my entire Gameday-using experience was defiled by a pretty glaring error by MLB.com’s programmers. Namely, the virtual Sun Life Stadium outfield seats have fans in them — lots of fans. Everyone knows that these seats are never actually filled. Hell, the team even closed off the upper deck of the stadium back in July.

It is a small oversight, but one that nevertheless has a profound impact on what the user takes away from using the application. It is like the moment in a film or a book when something happens that requires the viewer or reader to suspend their disbelief to the point that they are no longer able to take seriously that film or book and the world it is attempting to conjure. I beseech MLB and its cabal of programmers to address this issue as soon as possible.