The beauty in arguing over baseball umpires
The major leagues are testing robots to call balls and strikes, prompting deeper questions about the irreplaceable values of human excellence.
An umpire looks at the Jumbotron during an automated ball-strike challenge in a March 2 Dodgers-White Sox game during spring training in Phoenix, Ariz.
Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images NPSTrans
In Florida and Arizona, where ballplayers have emerged from their winter slumber into the citrus- and saguaro-scented breezes of spring training, pro ball is now arguing about umpires.
The sport has long done this, but there鈥檚 a new twist. For the first time, the major leagues are testing robots behind the plate. Human umpires still bark balls and strikes. If a pitcher, batter, or catcher doesn鈥檛 like a call, they can now object. An automated system then settles the matter.
That sounds simple enough. Baseball already has instant replay, introduced in 2008 to review whether runners are safe or out on the base path. And, for now, the new system is just a preseason experiment.
Yet for some, this feels different. 鈥淲e鈥檙e humans. Can we just be judged by humans?鈥� asked Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer. 鈥淲hat problem are we really solving?鈥� he posed to The New York Times.聽
Artificial intelligence is already changing baseball. Teams are using ever more sophisticated algorithms to analyze players and determine game strategy. Computerized umpiring, formally called Automated Ball-Strike System, however, hits at the game鈥檚 central contest 鈥� a battle between one person with a rock and another with a stick, each testing the other at the extremes of human endeavor.
Baseball is a game of fractions of time and space that puts into play a restless pursuit of dominion over fallibility. When pitchers throw great games, they evoke 鈥� to borrow the language of British art curator Catherine Milner 鈥� masterpieces 鈥渓ike the Sistine Chapel or Venus de Milo [that] embody a devotion to excellence in their precision and gracefully balanced composition.鈥�
Yet, as in fine art, baseball鈥檚 beauty flowers in the imperfections and subtle deceptions that reveal human striving. With human umpires, good catchers 鈥渇rame鈥� pitches and good pitchers make microadjustments to paint the edges of subjective strike zones. If they miss the mark, good hitters make them pay for it.
That interplay of human judgment is baseball鈥檚 rebuttal to a world of constant digital advancement. 鈥淪oul is kinda important in this increasingly techno world, and if we have to lose a little accuracy [on the ball field] to acquire that soul, well, that鈥檚 a currency worth expending,鈥� wrote Steven Zeitchik, a longtime tech and sports journalist, on the online platform Substack.
Mr. Zeitchik isn鈥檛 completely sold on his own argument. Human umpires make bad calls on less than 4% of pitches, according to Statcast. But society is already concerned about human displacement by AI. 鈥淚f we start saying that an AI shouldn鈥檛 replace a [home] plate-measurer, ... it鈥檒l make people inured to listening when the humans really do add something valuable,鈥� he wrote. The beautiful art of arguing about umpires goes on.