We had to wait a couple of weeks for them, but now they’re back with us and I couldn’t be happier.  The Condensed Games are one of the best parts of MLB.com’s multimedia coverage and it’s great to see they are online once again.

I was incredibly frustrated at the start of last year when MLB.com decided to get rid of them and I was far from the only person who felt the same way.  Their reinstatement partway through the 2008 season was warmly welcomed and the fact that they were highlighted in the promotional material for the 2009 MLB.TV subscriptions showed that MLB.com realized they had made a mistake last time around.

I’m sure fans in North America enjoy the Condensed Games as well, but they are particularly useful for those of us who don’t live in the States and are unable to stay up in the early hours of the morning to watch all the games we are interested in live.  The box scores, game wraps and highlight clips fill in some of the details, but they don’t give you a full sense of how the contest played out.

You would need to watch the full nine innings (or more in extra inning games) to get the whole story and the Archive function via MLB.tv allows you to do just that.  However, it’s not easy to find the time required every day, especially if there’s more than one game you want to look at. 

Condensed Games are the next best thing.

Take the Yankees-Red Sox clash from last night.  Like a lot of baseball fans who don’t support either of the AL East behemoths, the hype machine surrounding their contests gets a bit tiresome.  Yet you can’t deny they are two excellent teams and that a special atmosphere is generated when they come together. So I was keen to follow the drama of their first meeting in 2009.

First pitch was scheduled for ten past midnight UK time.  While I could have stayed up and watched it live as it was a Friday night/Saturday morning affair, a long week at work made it likely that my body’s desire for sleep would win out over my desire to watch the game and I would only end up dozing off.  I resolved to get a good night’s sleep and to check out the action on Saturday morning.

I didn’t know at the time that Condensed Games were back with us and moaned about their continued absence on Twitter.  Philipp from Mister-Baseball.com corrected me and I gleefully clicked my way to the Media Center page to find that I could watch seventeen and a half minutes of highlights.

For the uninitiated, Condensed Games show you the final pitch of every plate appearance, whether it results in an out or the player getting on base.  The edits are a bit abrupt at times sound-wise, but that’s no problem.  By watching every plate appearance, you are left with a keen sense of how the game ebbed and flowed. 

That includes some of the smaller elements to a game that will often be left out of the highlights packages.  For example, Jeter and Cano turned several neat double-plays, although they were topped by the 4-2-3 DP pulled off by the Red Sox in the top of the ninth.You certainly wouldn’t have known from the box score that Kevin Youkilis nearly took Mariano Rivera’s head off with his single in the bottom of the frame, but the Condensed Game footage allowed you to see the savage swipe and the reeling Rivera all in a heart-stopping moment.

Of course, the Red Sox prevailed thanks to two dramatic round-trippers.  First Jason Bay sent the game to extra innings with a two-run blast to just left of centre field, before Youkilis brought the game to a glorious close (for Red Sox fans) by launching a solo shot completely over the Green Monster in the eleventh.

It was a great game and, thanks to the Condensed Games feature, I was able to enjoy it in a shortened but detailed fashion.

Long live Condensed Games!