News & Views
News & Views
March 25, 2008
Joaquin Chapa Blogs About the New Video Scoreboard at Hayward Field
It feels somehow oddly embarrassing to see a humongous Microsoft Windows desktop looking down on Hayward Field; like you're catching the place in a state of undress. But the new video board has just been completed, and I guess at some point you've got to test how it links up with the computer system.
On the topic of the new video board, my editorial opinion is that it is beautiful, if a bit disquieting*. It had to happen, of course, all things must modernize. But seeing it still provokes a certain dissonant effect, similar to what you would feel if your grandmother got an iPhone or something like that. It's like when The New York Times switched to color photography.
There is work going on basically all the time at Hayward right now. There is fencing that surrounds the track except for one little crack near the start/finish line, where we can get through to run workouts. While it's nice to get back onto the track, the whole Hayward Field ambiance isn't quite there yet.
A few weeks ago they were testing the new sound system, which sounds fantastic, but which also provided some very weird and irritating moments at practice. One day there was a continual string of strange boing-bleep, bleep-boing type sounds that sounded pretty much exactly like what people in the 1970's thought the future would sound like, according to various movies and TV reruns that I've watched. The worst day, which was more like a kind of sick joke, came on one of those truly horrendous, 38-degree, windy-and-pouring type of days that you can get in Oregon in February. All throughout our 1K repeats, we had to listen to the new speakers blast--on repeat--a 20 second snippet of an extremely down-beat cover of "I can see clearly now", and that particular snippet was the piece of the song that goes from the start of the chorus to the lyric, "It's gonna be a bright, bright, bri-i-ight sun shining day." It was like something out of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Like something designed to make you go crazy. So, actually, the silently on-looking Windows desktop is something of a nice change of pace.
For those with foggy or no memories of the previous scoreboard: it was old; and as far as stadium screens go, pretty inexpressive. It could tell you who was in the race, providing the athlete's name wasn't too long; give a three letter abbreviation of an athlete's affiliation (NKE, USA, JPN, etc.); and it could tell you times; and that was about it. It told you all of this monochromatically, in little yellow light bulbs, each set into a huge black grid. During races it morphed into a gigantic digital running clock (which seems, to a runner, both exceedingly huge and to run implausibly fast as one struggles down the homestretch in the final hundred meters).
If you are detecting a little conservatism and nostalgia here, you're right, but it isn't just me. According to my totally not-random and unscientific opinion poll, the general feeling around town about the New Hayward is a complicated mix of pride and remorse. Everyone has their own special thing that they miss: mine is the oversized clock, I've heard a number of people lament that the "Just Do It" NIKE sign is being put out to pasture, others hope that Hayward doesn't smell different after the renovations.
The first outdoor meet is less than a week away at this point and Hayward isn't quite ready for its late June close-up just yet, but it's getting there. I'm sure that as the Preview rolls around everyone will enjoy the new board, I won't be able to not watch myself, the sound quality will be better and we'll all come to accept and love and grow nostalgic anew about the New Hayward. My one totally conservative and stodgy request: I hope that there is some way--even on the new screen--to program a big, black and yellow clock to show the running time during races.
*On a side note, though I love video boards as much as the next guy, the new board has one more knock against it, but it's a kind of personal neurosis bias. They're like a mirror, but more extreme. I can't help but look up at them while I'm racing, like it's going to give me some kind of objective, third-party confirmation that I am, in fact, smooth and relaxed at the 800 meter mark, which is stupid and narcissistic but I can't help it.
Read Joaquin Chapa's Feb. 2 blog entry