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Umpire Tossed from Game: Computers to Call Balls and Strikes

Having the umpire tossed from the game, and letting a computer call balls and strikes seems like a very 2019 thing to do. After all, every fan watching TV can see how often the ump is wrong. But Bill Whittle and Stephen Green tell Scott Ott a robot ump is a major league mistake.

Throw the Ump Out

Having the umpire tossed from the game, and letting a computer call balls and strikes seems like a very 2019 thing to do. After all, every fan watching TV can see how often the ump is wrong. But Bill Whittle and Stephen Green tell Scott Ott a robot ump is a major league mistake.

21 replies on “Umpire Tossed from Game: Computers to Call Balls and Strikes”

I’m a huge fan of baseball and watch hundreds of games each season. I could not disagree with the guys more on the balls and strikes calls. Umpires get 2/3 of the close pitches wrong and the TV screen shows that they get many not-so-close ones incorrect as well. If baseball is to survive, it will need new fans and with the obviously terrible and inconsistent application of the rules being shown each game, new fans are likely to turn it off.

The idea I’ve heard I like best is a camera setup with with the overlay box the TV cast uses, with people watching and pressing a button for ball / strike. A light on a pole where the ump is would indicate the ball / strike call and all you’ve done is move the ump off the field into a box next to the announcers.

I figured it would be some kind of closed-loop thing like this. A lot of people think there won’t be a home plate umpire, which would be ridiculous. I’ve wanted the strikes to be called by technology for a while, but we can’t even get the home plate umpires to stop calling check-swings. It is infuriating.

I think the difference between what I’ve heard and what the guys discussed is there is still a human involved, just using technological assist vs completely computer performed.

You could go so far as putting in an instant slowdown feature to the camera, so the umpire sees the ball cross the plate a few seconds later than everyone else, to see it slower. A DVR+Slomo feature perhaps.

See this is why I grew up in Texas and the rest of you didn’t. We never played p/u baseball. BUT we always played p/u football. Or the less organized version, and now so un-woke named, smear the queer. Basically everyone tries to tackle, TACKLE, the guy w/ the football. No pads, no helmets, no parents, just a bunch of 8yr olds trying to hurt each other.

This not the “fundamental transformation of America”. BUT it is the “fundamental change of baseball.” WHAT? would be next Robotic players? WHY? can’t “They” just leave the game alone. It has worked perfectly with the mistakes for well over 100 years. Let us not forget that a part of the game is for the fan to demonstrate their knowledge and calls of balls and strikes. Don’t take that away.

I recall a National League Championship series between the Atlanta Braves and the Florida Marlins. It was a pivotal game, I think a game seven. The umpire that day (?Gregg?) was calling strikes 6-10 inches off of the plate. Everybody, the teams, the fans, the announcers were screaming. The Braves lost.
At least I can blame the ump and not my team.

I was sitting at a sports bar having lunch last week when they showed a recap all of the bad calls that Bryce Harper was a victim of. Some were so bad that it looked like they were done on purpose just to piss him off. 🙂

Soccer? Who wants to see a bunch of whiny Italians doing Opera on the field when you can watch a truly great American Sport…
Womens Beach Volley Ball!

Why stop at referees? Why not use robotic pitchers? Why do we even need any of the players at all?? AI and robotics can eliminate the massive salaries teams have to pay and eliminate human injuries. You can go one step further and make the robotic players controllable over the internet so wealthy online gamers can pay to assume limited control over the robot players. You can make the whole game interactive for online gamers to get in on. We can get robotic beer and hot dog vendors in the stadiums too. Heck….. Why stop there? Get those robotic vacuum cleaners to clean the stadium after the game is over and the fans leave. *sarcasm*

In my opinion, the only game more silly and less interesting to watch than baseball is Go Fish. Even though I don’t watch baseball and have less that zero interest in the game, keep the damn robots off the field, in the packing case, and turned off. Otherwise, why bother?

Consider putting a robot in charge of anything. What could go wrong … go wrong … go wrong … go wro…Splutter … Crash!

Bugs? Yes always and forever. It’s Software after all. It’s rather like an airplane crash in which the pilot dies – the cause was pilot error. He trusted the software that was doing the flying, the software had a bug in it and it cost him his life.

A machine can be stronger, faster, and go further than any human alive. So what? There is one thing they cannot do is detect or correct their own mistakes when they are not specifically designed to detect and correct their mistakes. Further, if the design was not implemented correctly or not maintained correctly, failure is certain. Too many times the failure is catastrophic. The machine doesn’t care one way or the other. The humans involved usually do care and often pay for the mistakes with their lives.

In the programming world I’ve heard two jokes:

Humans make mistakes, but to really foul something up you need a computer

and

Computer make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

Garbage In, garbage out GIGO is another way of saying what you said.

I have long maintained that soccer would be much more popular in the USA if each goal were worth 6 or 7 points.

Hey Steve, I am sure you have heard this but your mic is sounding like you are in a shipping container again. What a horrible idea to eliminate the human element from baseball. If we want to eliminate humans, the way that Boston Scientific is going, it won’t be long before the will be able to field a team of robots who will all play at skill levels only dreamed about by humans. Interesting for the 1st couple games but after that…meh. Now if you want robots and computers, give me battlebots any day. Wonderful activity.

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