My argument is not that the strike zone should be called by humans because it has been the long tradition, simply that my support for a human strike zone is consistent with the long tradition of baseball, and not some idiosyncratic preference of mine. Some traditions are good, some are not.
The real problem with the use of replay to correct calls on the field is that it artificially creates a non-human scale and imposes it on the game. The question of what constitutes a catch in the NFL has become absurd (and I think the NFL has become aware of this). When they have to slow down to a frame by frame advance and get down to are any electrons in the ball overlapping with microns of a strike zone defined from a POV that neither the pitcher, the batter or the umpire could possibly have had when the pitch was actually thrown, we have lost contact with the game as it is experienced in real life. My solution, which I have advocated here (and many other places in my life) for a couple of years is to ban super slow motion from use in correcting calls. I don't have any objection to using replay to correct obvious mistakes (there have been a few, but only a few, real boners in MLB post-season history). Mistakes that can be easily seen on real-speed, and maybe even regular slow motion, mistakes that a large majority of professional officials would have corrected in real time if they had the opportunity, can and should be easily and quickly corrected, and there would not be very many of these. Mistakes that require super slo motion and non-human scale precision are not really "mistakes" - they are part of the zone of uncertainty in which we all life our real lives. I don't want televised sports to create and perpetuate the myth that we can expect error-free zones in which to live our lives. I was able to come to terms with the horror of the 2000 election when I realized that, even if Al Gore did win Florida (I think he probably did), the result either way was inside the margin of error, not of the polls, but of the actual election. Human beings simply can not conduct an election involving millions of people over more than 50,000 square miles with 100% accuracy. Most of the time, the difference in recorded votes is greater than this inherent human error; but once in a while the the recorded vote is closer than the human error rate, and when that happens, it is meaningless to ask who *really* got more votes, Gore or Bush? That is a political version of the scholastic question asking how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Presumably the eye of God is able to see the actual number of votes cast for each side, and maybe there is some noumenal world in which that means something. But in the phenomenal world in which human beings live and hold elections and play baseball games, that 100% accurate count does not exist. And, just to justify this conversation for those who think it has gone hopelessly off topic: This is a problem that as has been noted by others here is created largely by the transition of professional sports from a live, in-person event to a televised event. I don't object to many of the changes in these games that have been required for that transition, but I do think we have to be vigilant to make sure that we don't sacrifice the essence of the sport to make for good TV. I suppose we could pass a rule that once a team fall behind my more than 4 runs every run it scores will be multiplied by two. That would save TV baseball from boring wipeouts, but it would so fundamentally change the game that it would not be worth it. On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 3:19 AM, JW <[email protected]> wrote: > > By long tradition, if not black letter law, that relative strike zone > has also > > always been relative to the position of the umpire... > > "By long tradition," games ended when the sun went down, each league had > its own umpiring staff, etc. Time marches on, and traditions change. Some > of us may rue the addition of lights at Wrigley, but nobody worth listening > to is calling for a re-institution of the pre-1947 color line. > > Officiating, in all sports, is evolving from the days when the only people > who saw a play were at the game, and they only saw it once. Now, everybody > in the stands and at home can see the play multiple times. In that > situation, it's silly to make the officials the only people who aren't > allowed to look at, or benefit from, a replay. > > That said, calls exist on an axis from obviously right (most) to obviously > wrong. It makes sense to fix the wrong ones. The problem is that we're also > going to look at close calls in the process, and reasonable people can > differ about those, especially when wearing homer glasses. > > > Last night was maybe the worst strike zone in the history of baseball... > it was embarrassing. > > If the automated system they use to help evaluate umpires can call balls > and strikes consistently correctly, baseball should use it. (There's an > umpires' union to deal with before it can happen, so it will be a while.) > If they can avoid "embarrassment," that's a good thing. > > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... 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