Brian Murphy: Robo umps will strangle baseball's remaining humanity
The 12-year-old pounced on a juicy meatball, barrel meeting pill with the unmistakable ping and soaring trajectory of a 3-run bomb he’ll remember the rest of his life.
I knew it was gone before I had yanked off my mask, jogged out to the pitcher’s mound and twirled my right index finger to affirm the straightaway home run. Blond mullet flapping, the dude joyfully fist-pumped around the bases while his teammates and their parents erupted.
Out of nowhere, a ball bounced in and died in the infield grass. The center fielder apparently had uncorked it from the warning track and was now screaming that the drive never cleared the fence.
His coaches roared about irrefutable DNA evidence proving it could not have been a homer. They demanded I overturn my call and declare a ground-rule double, which would have only allowed one run to score.
Suddenly, I felt lonelier than Eleanor Rigby.
After 20-something games umpiring youth games, I was in the middle of my first bruhaha. The kind we may never see again if MLB’s soulless perfectionists keep dehumanizing the grand old game by leveraging artificial intelligence to call balls and strikes.
I had seen the ball clear the fence. No doubt. Had the ball rolled back underneath from the grassy knoll behind it? Did the center fielder simply pick up a stray warm-up ball and heave it back into play?
I had no choice but to stick with my original call, cool the hot tempers and move on. To the next hitter and the inevitable but totally acceptable groans about my wide strike zone.
Bring. It. On. Arguing with umpires is as American as apple pie, cheap beer, dirty politics and willful ignorance.
Baseball is defined by its human frailties. Always has been. They are the connective tissue that binds fans to their diamond heroes and villains.
The greatest hitters on the planet fail seven times out of every 10 at bats. Since 1903, only 21 pitchers have faced 27 hitters in a game and retired them all – a span of more than 224,000 contests.
In 2021, MLB teams committed 2,626 errors despite a sterling .985 overall fielding percentage.
Yet we expect … strike that. We demand the sport’s 76 full-time umpires somehow exceed the performance levels of the supremely talented but universally flawed players they officiate.
Replay resolves most disputable plays on the bases and around the boundaries. The evolving protocols have all but eliminated controversial calls while snuffing momentum and arguments that have entertained fans for more than a century.
Home plate umpires remain subjective interpreters of an elastic strike zone that requires a physics degree to not only understand, but apply in real time as 100-mph pitches bend, dive and dart in four-tenths of a second like never before.
Meanwhile, high-definition graphics pinpoint pitches on every broadcast. They have turned remote control warriors into rabid social media dogs, compiling and analyzing missed calls like forensic crusaders solving cold cases.
“That wasn’t a strike, it was an inch off the plate! You’re a &%#*@!+ joke! How are you still employed!”
Those tiny white lines on the screen are stirring a toxic mix of technologically driven, instant reaction that is neither measured nor graceful. Fans and viewers demand a mistake-free outcome that is impossible to produce.
Angel Hernandez is not the devil despite his documented inconsistencies behind the plate. Pat Hoberg is not the messiah despite being the most accurate among those calling balls and strikes, according to Umpire Scorecards.
The Twitter account of more than 250,000 followers was founded by a Boston University computer science and statistics major.
Hoberg nails 96.1% of his calls, according to Umpire Scorecards. Hernandez? Near the bottom of the pack at 92.7%, according to a recent story in USA Today.
Eight umpires average at least 95% in accuracy while the median is 93.5%.
That’s a hell of a standard. We should all be happy to perform our jobs at an A-minus level.
Is it worth losing our collective minds over a handful of missed balls or strikes per game?
I get it. Big data isn’t going anywhere. It has created more tools for baseball’s talent evaluators, players and marketers to evaluate performance and maximize revenues in more efficient and beneficial ways.
I have no issue using digital strike zones to evaluate umpires. Ratings should be used to manage coveted postseason jobs. Plate assignments should be doled out to umps with acceptable standards in his balls-and-strikes accuracy.
But analytics also are strangling baseball’s humanity in the bathtub.
Why the inexorable march to turn plate umps into robots who wait for a digital prompt to signal a call? We’ll never again see another player or manager scream, kick dirt or create a yard sale in front of the dugout.
What a buzz-kill.
Clips of Earl Weaver, Billy Martin and Lou Piniella going jaw-to-jaw with the men in blue are classic. Soon to be showmanship relics of a bygone era. Like stagecoaches, dollar hotdogs and bipartisanship.
What is a baseball fan if not a martyr?
The Cardinals have won two World Series since 1985, but utter Don Denkinger’s name anywhere in St. Louis and you’re liable to get cracked over the head with a bottle of Bud.
“In sports, human error needs to be a thing,” New York Mets starting pitcher Chris Bassitt told USA Today. “I think that’s what makes sports in general beautiful is that there is human error, not just from the athletes but the people umpiring and officiating, managers calling the game, general managers ... everybody makes mistakes.
“We’re all human. We’re all trying to do our best. And I think that’s the beauty in it all.”
Baseball is starving for more action, more entertainment, more soul. Being right all the time is not fun. It’s insufferable.
Leaving the men in masks to their devices is the easiest call to make.
Brian Murphy joins Bring Me The News as a weekly columnist after 20 years covering Minnesota sports with the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He's also a contributor writing about the Vikings for PurpleInsider.
