by Something about the great American pastime brings out the best in app designers. MLB.com At Bat’s breathtaking ballparks and pitch trackers are the gold standard for professional sports apps, Topps Pennant turns lifeless box scores into beautiful works of art, and iScore reimagines the dull, antiquated scorecard with lush textures and vivid charts. Race to the Pennant makes a strong case for joining that list. With a simple, colorful interface, the app offers a slick visual interpretation of baseball standings that makes following your favorite team a lot more fun – whether they’re headed to the playoffs or stuck in the cellar.
Right off the bat, you can tell Race to the Pennant is serious about baseball. A random set of career statistics from a Hall of Famer greets you each time you launch, arrayed neatly over a faded blue splash screen reminiscent of an old-time pennant banner. Inside, leagues and divisions are clearly delineated, with each of the 30 teams represented by an appropriately colored bar that inches up the screen with every victory. Tapping one of the divisions brings up detailed win-loss records, including runs scored vs. runs allowed, home vs. away, and number of games out of first place. Instead of box scores, Race to the Pennant includes an MLB.com feed of headlines for each team, which display in an in-app browser window when tapped.
While Race to the Pennant combines a great concept with top-notch design, it doesn’t quite hit it out of the park. We experienced a couple of crashes, but the most glaring issue is with its updating. Our smartphones have spoiled us with effortless, up-to-the-second scores and highlights, but Race to the Pennant relies on an outdated dialogue box to push updates. It barely takes a second, but having to tap a download button nearly every time we logged in quickly became tedious. Since the in-app browser only links to the full MLB.com desktop site, stories were sometimes slow to load and a bit tricky to read; a more elegant solution would be to offer Instapaper or Readability-optimized versions.
The bottom line. Race to the Pennant’s interface is major-league caliber, but its updating system is stuck in the minors.
Review Synopsis
Product:
