How could they miss that, they gripe.
Why can’t they see?
Who’s training these guys,
don’t they have a TV?
This isn’t rocket science,
the box is right there.
Could it be that they don’t know,
or not really care?
Perhaps they made a bet
or need to get their eyes checked.
Maybe something’s wrong at home
and their life is a wreck.
Because you can’t miss that badly,
not if you have a screen,
that shows you the lines
of the pitches I’ve seen.
What’s the point of the box,
because he’s clearly not using it.
Let’s put in the robots—
let’s make this guy quit.
Because it’s one or the other,
the robots or the man,
and we need the robots to see
what the man can’t.
What’s the counter?
That drama makes the game great?
Okay, there’s some merit to that,
that I can appreciate.
But this is their profession—
how can they be so bad?
If I failed as much as they did,
I’d have to be glad.
To still have a job,
one mistake after another—
boy, you could pay me anything
for that gig, brother.
That’s what they say, at least,
and the voices are getting louder.
Begging for accuracy.
No room for error.
And when the robots take over,
a year or two from now,
and one day get it wrong,
they’ll then wonder how.
How could the robots
miss the arc of the ball,
the depth of the zone
or the shape of it all?
Say, who designed these things,
let’s have his head.
If we did our jobs this poorly,
surely, we’d be dead.
So, string up the robots,
kill all their programs.
Give us something better—
what a joke, what a sham.
We must get it right,
that’s all that we ask,
how can it be so hard
to perform this simple task?
And so back come the humans—
but worse than before,
because the good ones are gone
and don’t want it no more.
This is true for any game
any time, any date—
better doesn’t hang around
when it’s shoved off the plate.
Losses will grow
from those who can’t stand,
that the drama of errors
is the beauty of man.
— ❧ —
World Series Is On!
I’ve always loved baseball and watch the World Series regardless of who is playing. I just love the game. I’m a Red Sox fan, but I keep watching even if their season is over. Baseball has nuance unlike any other kind of sport.
Over the last several years, especially with social media in the mix, people are calling to get rid of the umpires and go full robot. And they do this even though the umpires call pitches and strikes correctly, 94% of the time. I get that people want the game to be called as accurately as possible, but the possibility of an umpire making a bad call never bothered me. Instead, I felt like the onus was on the hitter to step up and get swinging. I like the gutsy aspect of a guy taking a crack at it when the pitch is borderline, or even a little off the plate. It’s that risk-taking that I think is the extra cherry on top of an already beautiful game.
But the ABS system is coming, and I think it will be fine. As long as it’s limited to challenges and we still have umpires calling the game on the field. I hope the game doesn’t get to the point where everything is called by a guy sitting up in a control room, looking at the digital k-zone box on a tv screen. We have enough video games. I want the game of baseball to stay untarnished by AI and robotic interference, especially since most everything else in our lives will surely include it. Let’s just play baseball and stop the whining. Remove the k-zone box from what we see on TV (because that’s what really has people thinking they know more than a major league umpire), and game on.
Silly, I know. A pipe dream. Maybe for hard knocks baseball I’m going to have to sign up for old man baseball somewhere and just get back to playing myself. Hmmm…