SF Giants use Bengie Molina to advertise Oracle Park's improved WiFi

There's something about baseball that can't be found anywhere else. It's in the smell of fresh grass and the crack of the bat. It's in the relief of a cold drink under the hot sun. It's in the way the summer afternoon crawls by, freed from the manic urgency of a game clock or buzzer. It's probably not in the wifi.

But as the game moves into the modern age, we the fans bring with it our oft-overconnected selves. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's only natural to soak in the sights and sounds of the ballpark experience with panoramic photos and videos of candid moments, then share those with your family and friends. Sometimes, you'll want to look up stats and highlights of your favorite players, or even sneak in an email or two. It's part of who we are, and how we experience the game today.

There's usually one problem, though: stadium WiFi. Anybody who's ever tried to upload a video to Twitter while at a ballpark understands just how grating that task is. And ironically, that's why sharing the fun tends to detract from the ballpark experience the most! Most of us just want to send a few photos showing off our seats and get back to the game without having to worry about failed uploads and bad connections.

The SF Giants, for their part, seem to have recognized this. This year, they've gone all-in on upgrading their WiFi. Oracle Park will become the first outdoor professional sporting venue to host WiFi 6E connectivity, a new development in bulk Internet service. No longer will fans feel the burden of competing with each other for upload and download data. To hammer home the point, the Giants have released this helpful graphic, courtesy of NBC Sports Bay Area correspondent Carmen Kiew:

Oracle Park is updating their Wi-Fi to 6E speeds which I totally didn’t understand until this visual of upgrading from Bengie Molina to The Freeze pic.twitter.com/9hgsZp93lR
— Carmen Kiew (@carmenkiew) March 23, 2023

As much as we all love Bengie Molina, I think I'll take The Freeze in a footrace.

What is WiFi 6E?

Part of the reason that this upgrade might not get much hype is that WiFi 6E is a fairly unknown commodity to the general public. This article breaks it down further, but the gist of it is that 6E is a high-capacity, short-range signal that allows for tremendous increases in the amount of data being shuttled back and forth. It's most useful for large companies and in applications like stadiums, where data usage climbs to absurd rates, but people won't need to access it once they leave the stadium.

To support the introduction of 6E at Oracle Park, the SF Giants have installed around 900 WiFi devices around the stadium, which should give fans blazing-fast Internet connection throughout the park. Certainly, this will be put to the test immediately and often, and we'll have to wait and see whether dead spots continue to be a fact of life or if you can video chat from the 415 just as smoothly as you can from the upper deck.