And the game of baseball changed, forever.
In last night's 3-1 Yankee win over San Francisco, seven Automatic Ball and Strike challenges reversed calls by umpire Whitson. One, in the 3rd, turned a called-third strike on Trent Grisham into ball three, leading to a walk and a run. Another, in the 9th, nearly led to a Giants rally. Whitson started the game as its Supreme and Undisputed Boss. He finished looking like a castrated flyspeck, a vestigial organ perched ornamentally behind the catcher.
Never again will home plate bullies - the mistake-prone Richie Garcia or the arrogant "Cowboy" Joe West - decide the outcome of ball games.
From now on, the faceless, lifeless eyeball of A.I. - the HAL 9000 of sports: ("I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that") - will overturn calls that were accepted for more than a century.
From now on, a K is not a K, until the ABS challenge is complete.
And damn... here's the rub:
I dunno if we should celebrate this... or fight it with all we got.
Soon, every stat, every outcome, every disputed play that was to eventually become a vagary of the game... they'll be gone. Someone will hit .400. Or a pitcher will throw back-to-back perfect games. Everything we once took for granted will be subject to review. Baseball history is no more.
This week, the Yankees swept SF. But the real winner was The Machine. For now, teams are allowed only two wrongful challenges per game. That rule will not hold. After all, why should a bad call in the ninth - or any time - be allowed?
Every fan remembers at least one at-bat - a called third strike in the dirt, or a bases loaded walk, right down the middle - so botched by the home ump that we screamed at the TV and kicked the puppy, and - frankly, we will take the outrage to our graves. Never again, right? Well, we'll soon get our wish.
But I wonder: Did baseball just kick humanity in the balls?
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1 comment:
I, for one, welcome our machine masters. Especially since human umps can suck so incredibly bad. It's a tough job, I'm sure, but I'd rather have a game called correctly than turn into the NFL, where refs routinely decide games with their questionable--sometimes suspiciously so--penalty calls. But I don't see that problem solved anytime soon. Replays alone won't do it. In both baseball and football, we've seen bad calls upheld by humans looking at multiple video angles, unable to determine what really happened.
That, I suppose, may always be with us. But let's eliminate it as much as we can.
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