There is a problem with the way we watch baseball games, or perhaps more accurately, with the way baseball games are provided for our eyes and ears to enjoy. The picture has never been clearer, the camera angles never better, the sound never sharper, and the graphics never more informative, but the taste of it gets more and more sour with each passing postseason.
Countless replays and K-Zones have made it incredibly easy for fans to be armchair umpires, which is interesting because some accounts have the umpires themselves in rocking chairs twenty feet behind home plate in the 19th century. We are able to see every pitch and every tag from a myriad of angles at varying stages of slow motion whether we want to or not, and I imagine that many of us take a perverse pleasure in doing someone’s job better than he can do it from the safety of our homes and offices.
The two or three talking heads assigned to overanalyze each postseason baseball game jump into the fray as well, declaring calls good or bad based on these replays. Notice that they reserve judgment until the replays show what is without a doubt the right call, that their tongues cluck only after the ball has settled on one side of the white line or the other, or that they offer congratulations for a consistent strike zone only after the points are plotted and the yellow streak is painted on the rectangle.
To be fair, there have been some badly missed calls this offseason, some that leave me shaking my head and feeling awful for the men in blue. I try to make my call when they make their call, to form my opinion in the moment just like they must, but I cannot close my eyes when the replays come. The admonishment from the press box makes my stomach turn, but in these cases, the fact remains that the umpires were wrong.
This is not a good thing. Umpire errors are not as much a part of the game as the curve ball and the seventh inning stretch. We should not tolerate such incompetence, especially since we now have the technology to correct these mistakes.
There are two systems at work here. One is archaic and relies on human resources. It is expensive and frustrating and rarely goes a day without making someone upset at a malfunction, real or perceived. The worst feature of this system is that it will correct an error by itself only very rarely; everyone in the game must live with whatever the system produces and continue on with life.
The second, newer system has not been officially implemented yet, but we can see it at work on our TVs and our favorite stats websites. It will almost always tell us the right call with complete impartiality, offer us an infinite number of looks at every single play, and, perhaps best of all, never argue and never ask for a vacation.
The two systems do not work in harmony, rather creating a cacophony, a polytonal opus comprised of smug second-guessing, embarrassing replays, and superfluous graphics that have to strain to show us their meaning. It is difficult to watch baseball with these two systems warring against each other and MLB standing by doing nothing about all of the noise.
Something needs to happen before the first pitch of the 2010 season. I see two alternatives.
1) MLB, the umpire’s union, and the networks agree not to show instant replays. Ever. Umpires’ responsibilities remain intact.
2) MLB strips umpire responsibilities down to tag plays and rule interpretations and leaves fair/foul, ball/strike, force plays and home run/not home run to the hardware. The game is ruled by computers that give instant, indisputable decisions.
The first option would make watching baseball so much more beautiful but is also so unlikely to happen. Of course people want to know what the right call was. Of course people want to see that bang-bang play again and again, if anything to distance themselves as far as possible from having to actually watch the game and make a decision for themselves.
I could live with umpire errors if we weren’t constantly reminded of their frequency and degree. I could accept the human element if game analysis and reporting were approached with more humanity. This last gripe extends to coverage of the players and managers as well; second-guessing has gotten so harsh and so negative lately that it’s a wonder that any of these “journalists” are still allowed within thirty-nine feet of the clubhouse.
The first option might spur a decline in the number of useless graphics and in-your-face pseudo-analysis. Who cares how far Bobby Abreu is standing off first base when he takes his lead, don’t the producers understand that the naked eye can tell us enough? Why do I need to know that a Yankees key to victory is for A-Rod to “continue past struggles” or that “Figgins’ bat needs to wake-up” for the Angels to have a chance? (No kidding on those last ones, I wonder if we can show replays and ostracize the producer that those gems sneaked past)
When is the last time you watched a baseball game at any level without an electronic scoreboard? It’s amazing how rich a baseball experience can be when you actually have to pay attention to the score, the count, and how many outs there are. Maybe ditching umpire-bashing replays could help steer the mad, mad baseball media machine back in that direction.
The second option takes care of the incorrect calls, speeds up the games, and almost completely eliminates arguments and ejections. It would take some capital to develop the perfect strike zone machine and install it in all 30 ballparks, but fair/foul is basically already being done with line judging in tennis, and I’m sure that geniuses can come up with some system for force plays where they rig the bases and the infielders’ shoes with sensors that could pick up stimuli and make the correct decision.
The Yes or No calls in baseball are easy enough for a machine to make on the spot, nearly as fast as a human being (way faster in the case of certain guys behind the plate). My primitive mind can’t imagine a computer system advanced enough to get tag plays right with any kind of speed, and it even takes human umpires some time to see the whole play and make those calls. We could keep four umpires around for tag plays, balks, and for interpreting rules.
I’m ready to do away with umpires calling balls and strikes, fair and foul, home run and not-home run, and force plays. We have the technology to do it and it is dangled in front of us on the television, there for any yahoo with a blog or a sports column or a microphone in front of his mouth to use it to pontificate about umpires “bearing down out there” and taking accountability for their performance.
Those in favor of keeping umpires around are trying to honor the history of baseball, but mocking umpires with instant replay and loudmouthed analysis is degrading and is getting old fast. Keeping both systems in place as they are is a disgrace and an embarrassment to the umpires and to the game of baseball and requires urgent attention.
After posting this and sleeping on it, I realize that I strayed a bit with my comments about negative commentary regarding the umpires’ calls. I don’t think that the live announcers have been all that brutal about the missed calls, and I haven’t seen anything in writing that really goes after the umpires.
I think that everyone probably understands that attacking the calls after the fact is egregious second-guessing and is quite cowardly. However, I’ll stand by my feelings that media coverage of the players and managers is far too negative and smug. Everything is a “mistake” or a “awful decision” and these people have no business using the words and tones that they do to describe these plays because they are so far away from the action.
Some idiot game recap reporter at ESPN assaulted Maicer Izturis’ attempt at a double play in the 13th inning of Game 2 of the ALCS by calling it a “TERR-R-R-ible throw,” which, though partly true, was annoying because of the way he said it. The screen showed the barf-inducing Yankees dogpile and then cut to the box score, where the announcer decided to harp on Izturis again, saying, “…and the Yankees take Game 2 on Izturis’ HORR-R-R-R-ible decision…” The man should be fired and ESPN ashamed at that excuse for coverage.
What happens now? Are we going to ditch replays or sack the umpires? I’m afraid that we’ll get some lukewarm, middle-of-the-road alternative and that MLB will do one more thing to compromise the quality of its product.
Question for you regarding pitchers and their ability or non-ability to hit their “spots”. When a pitcher, such as last night when Hughes was pitching to Guerrero and had him looking like a 2nd grader swinging a wet noodle, throws at a 45 foot curveball for a swinging strike do you throw him another CB to get rid of him or waste a pitch up and in to his zone? We know what happened, Hughes missed down the d@ck and Vlad as his does hits a weak GB up the middle for a hit to extend the inning. Was that pitch a mistake because he missed his “spot”???? What is the percentage of mistake pitches that are made during a MLB game. Someone here has the opinion that it is somewhere in the 85% range of mistake pitches during an MLB game. I am very curious to read your take on this.
Thank you!
Pete
Bob,
Dan Koosed is my Assistant GM here at the Flyers. We debate baseball a fair amount and have been discussing the bad umpiring on the last few games as have you.
I made mention about the infamous “mistake” pitch and it boiled down to me claiming that a pitcher only really hits his “spot” perhaps as low as 15% of the time. I mean really throws the ball exactly where he intends it to go!
Not talking balls and strikes here, I am talking I threw the dang thing on the mark I set in my brain.
So the question is to the wise Bob Sanchez, what percentage of the time do you think this occurs? That th pitcher could actually say I meant to hit that spot?
Can’t wait for your answer. No money on it. . . yet.
XXOO