The wife had a close encounter with the ESPN K-Zone.  It wasn’t pretty, as you’ll soon find out.

It was your typical Sunday night in the Paul household, starting with a huge casserole freshly cooked and ready to be eaten, with a few easy leftover meals set aside for the weeknights ahead.

A new work week was painfully on the horizon and a final stretch of R&R was in order, in hopes to soften the blow that would eventually arrive in the form of a screeching Monday morning alarm clock.

That’s when the night turned from standard to strange.

I had Sunday Night Baseball on, as many sports fans like myself would and THE WIFE arrived to the room late, therefore relinquishing the remote, at least, temporarily.

Baseball was on and if you know this site in any capacity, then you know that she loathes the sport.  It bores her to tears.

Depending on her mood that day, she’ll either

  1. Bury herself into her iPhone and let it happen
  2. Bargain to have something from the DVR turned on
  3. Demand to change the channel

But this twisted Seinfeld-like “Bizarro World” Sunday was different – it was a hybrid of the three.

THE WIFE pulled herself away from her phone, looked up to the TV and commented on the game, specifically ESPN’s new K-Zone, which at the beginning of the 2015 season, was permanently left up during every pitch.

Like the Grinch’s heart, it was almost as if THE WIFE’s in-depth sports analysis had grown TEN TIMES that day.

“THAT BOX IS ANNOYING!”, she exclaimed.

ESPN K-Zone never goes away

Even THE WIFE – yes, the one that hates sports – is not a fan of the ESPN K-Zone

OK, perhaps “in-depth” is not an accurate phrasing.

Still, I found myself somewhere in between falling off my couch and picking my chin up off the ground.

The comment was not profound in the slightest bit, but it matched a lot of opinions out there.

thewife

THE WIFE thinks K-Zone should be called out on strikes – that is, if she was familiar with baseball terminology

Most sports fans want to feel like they are a part of the game.  We want to be able to formulate our own opinions.  For baseball, I personally like to see where a pitch lands in the zone.  That leaves me able to predict the call (and the strike zone) from my own perspective.  I don’t need a display to hand-feed it to me all night long.  Although, I admittedly enjoy seeing the zone during replays, especially with the newer 3D images, which are pretty cool.

Plenty of people hit social media with opinions on the K-Zone when the season started.  ESPN’s Buster Olney defended it on his blog back in April.  In the same timeframe, Fansided shared a number of negative tweets on its site, while Awful Announcing said to give K-Zone a chance.

But all we really need to know about the subject is this: THE WIFE – and that’s the wife that HATES sports and absolutely loathes baseball – noticed the permanent K-Zone and said that it drove her crazy.

With the way the words come out of her mouth, it is like she would prefer seeing more Donald Trump headlines or back-to-back showings of the movie Pixels in 3D.

Love it or hate it, K-Zone is here.  However, there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on.  No new technology in sports viewership will ever be as bad as the Fox Sports “glow puck”.

Hey, no sweat major networks, we all make mistakes.  For all those mistakes, there’s always THE WIFE to call us out on them.