The Calling of Balls and Strikes Should No Longer Be Done by Humans

although I don’t consider myself a “traditional” old fuck. Should mlb decide to institute more technology for making calls, I would not abandon the game or even get overly upset. But I am not in favor of it, and my reason may be flimsy, but still important to me.

Baseball is a game, and I like that. I revel in baseball because ultimately it is not really important. It is playing and fun, and nothing really hangs on the results. Sometimes real life overwhelms me and baseball is a haven and solace where I can be terribly right or wrong and it doesn’t really matter.

Now I know that is not literally true, certainly for the players or owners or the many whose livelihood depends on wins and losses and on the statistics they post. But in the sense that wrong decisions, the wrong team winning and so on may occur, it really does not matter in any truly important way.

Now if you knew me, you would know how much that contradicts my actual approach to the game. I get terrible butterflies-more like wasps-when watching my team. I live and die by the daily scores and standings and can be impossible to my family when things do not go my way. It is purely emotional, and the only saving grace is that I know that and quickly force myself to snap out of it, at least on the surface. I know it is not tragedy, just disappointment, even if my emotional state seems mournful or grief-stricken.

So when I say it doesn’t matter, I am not so sure I live it that way. But what I do not like is treating it as if it is so important that we need technology to intervene. That is football with its intoned pronouncements about character and commitment, an attitude I find repugnant and full of bloated self-importance.

Somehow it seems to me that being so intent on getting it right elevates the game to something more that it should be. It is the thin wedge of making baseball a matter of real importance rather than a game that men play to amuse, divert and excite.

Denkinger got it maddeningly wrong. Cardinal fans will never forgive him. So what?!

That is essentially the umpires strike zone today, so make the changes and then use pitch f/x

Every team’s gfans think they get screwed by the umps – Yanks fans are crowing about how they love us. This is all a perception difference.

Dp umps mess up. Yes. Are there bad umps. yes. But by and large – with notable exceptions – they’re okay / consistent. We’ll always remember when we get hurt, so they’ll always seem bad. Isn’t the point of Questec to monitior and jusdge ump performance? MLB then needs to monitiopr and judge.

So when the batter, who has a bitch with the umb, takes a bat to the Pitch/FX machine… is he still thrown out ??