* "I can see clearly now…"

October 29, 2009

Umpires have beengetting a lot of bad press lately, and deservedly so. Sports pundits are calling for wider use of instant replay in an effort to make the right calls, primarily on fair and foul balls and other on-base issues.

One area they pretty much agree should not be touched is balls and strikes. Sure, technology exists that could determine the location of a pitch (kind of like lines on a tennis court), adjusted to each batter’s stance, but you have to have some sort of human element involved. Otherwise the game might as well be played by robots, and you know that‘s coming at some point, as any reader of science fiction could tell you.

TV broadcasts are always trying to shove their new toys down viewers’ throats. The latest are those home plate grids that would seem to show how many pitches the home plate umpire gets wrong: balls that should be strikes, strikes that should be balls, etc.

At the risk of straying from my sworn topic, I found this video from slate.com on the quality of that home plate technology quite educational.

I guess I could stretch and say you cuould watch this on your laptop…from your bookshelf. So we’re good?

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Tagged as: cameras, Television, umpires

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