Smoke pours from stadium LED display after baseball strike

By Guy Campos in Displays, Sports and arenas, US&Canada May 30, 2023 0

Kansas City Royals left fielder Edward Olivares launched the ball at 111mph before it took out two LED panels, with one back in action within seconds.

A smoking hole appeared in a baseball stadium's HDR LED scoreboard, after a direct hit from a baseball slugger on Sunday.

Part of the outdoor display at the Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City appeared to catch fire when hit by the ball, before one of two LED panels initially taken out of action began working again.

Writing on LinkedIn, Tedd Romanowitz of Futuresource Consulting, observed: "Initially two cabinets lost video signal but redundant wiring failed over, automatically restoring signal to the cabinet below in a matter of seconds."

Kansas City Royals left fielder Edward Olivares is said to have hit the ball 452 feet (138 metres) at an initial speed of 111mph to tie a baseball game in the eighth innings.

A teammate then took the Royals ahead to win the game in the next innings.

Kansas City Royal had recently invested in the tallest HDR video board in baseball, with new HDR-capable Daktronics LED technology retrofitted into an existing 104-foot by 84-foot (32 metres by 26 metres) crown-shaped structure in 2021.

Judging by photos of the stadium, it is an additional 21-foot by 108-foot (6.4 metres by 24 metres) HDR-capable Hall of Fame display in left field which was struck by the baseball at the weekend.

That's not KC BBQ smoke in the air.

Edward Olivares hit this ball so hard, the scoreboard started smoking. ???? pic.twitter.com/Kx1fuiioew

— Cut4 (@Cut4) May 28, 2023