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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2 comments:
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.
I'm afraid the Great AI Overlord - the real HAL 9000 - has been in charge for some time. Unbeknownst to Yankee fans, George Steinbrenner never had a son. But - genius that he was - he built the very first AI bot and call it 'his son'.
As the discerning eye will observe, all roster, lineup, positioning, player development, trades and conditioning programs are determined by HAL 9000.
But he needed front men, because he knew that it was far too soon for the world to accept his creation. So he turned an intern into the general manager. When George finally passed away, he had code written to describe the perfect front men. HAL 9000 hired an pudgy guy to play the son and - eventually - an amiable fop to serve as manager. Everyone has been paid handsomely to keep the secret.
But a good software program can't rest on its laurels. It requires constant upgrades. This is where the true genius of Levine & Trost appears. As gambling took over sports, our two heroes realized they could tweak the HAL 9000 to make decisions in real time that maximize gambling profits.
HAL 9000 has become a juggernaut!
This is why Yankee operational decisions are so fakakta, why the front office staff never leave and why the Yankees will never win a world series.
They make too much money losing in the end.
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