Regular readers of The Flying Pie are aware that we are traditionalists around here, guardians of the auld ways, singers of the alma mater, even to the extent of allowing vanilla to remain an actual ice-cream flavor. Thus, despite valid concerns about rampant loss of ocular quality among the nation’s umpire community, we have always defended the boys (and now girls) in blue when confronted with the prospect of newfangled robotic umpires superseding the old guys. Who would we vent our spleen at, who to blame for those critical home team losses? Besides, statistics say the umps are correct an impressive 94% of the time.
But 94% doesn’t help when our beloved Fighting Macaroons are nipped in the bottom of the ninth as Babe Hennessey’s slider right over the middle of the plate is called a ball, walking in the winning run. The new robotic replacement, it’s alleged, is correct a stunning 100% of the time, which would save Babe’s kid from being pantsed at school and having the heads cut off his garden gnomes. In the new system, the umpires’ jobs would be safe since they’d be retained for safe/out calls, lineup irregularities, dusting off the plate and giving the catcher a little extra time to get composed after being hit in the nether regions with an errant slider.
The major complaint of fans and ballplayers is with the varying strike zones of the umps. That territory should be the space over home plate which is between the batter’s armpits to the top of the knees when he assumes a natural stance, ala the Rules of Baseball. Softball has similar rules, but even more flagrant miscarriages of justice. Pitches above the beltline are rarely called strikes and those below the knees often so, as if the whole zone has been lowered a few notches. Softball umps, in particular, have a wider than prescribed strike zone, extending off the plate by inches on one or both sides, especially outside. We have seen softball pitches called strikes which the batter couldn’t hit with a canoe oar. Worse even, one umpire’s strike zone is another ump’s peach orchard or Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. So the question is---will the robot arbiters arrive like Mighty Mouse to save the day?
The Best Laid Plans Of Mice And Men….
Founded in 2001 by Paul Hawkins, who has a doctorate in Artificial Intelligence, Hawk-Eye was originally conceived as an optical tracking tool to enhance television sports coverage. The first broadcast partner used it for cricket. But then, in 2006, Hawk-Eye became an official replay tool used by tennis judges. Sony bought the company in 2011 for an undisclosed sum. Soon, English Premier League soccer, NASCAR, the Olympics, the Rugby World Cup and golf’s European Tour were using Hawk-Eye in broadcasts and to increase the accuracy of human refs. Hawk-Eye had 12 cameras perched in all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums by opening day, 2020, marking a watershed for the American market. The NFL began using Hawk-Eye to aid with replays the next year and the NBA signed a multiyear deal with Hawk-Eye in March of 2023. But the big excitement came with the declaration the company’s robots would call balls and strikes at half the Triple-A baseball games in 2023. Okay, so how did that work out? Not as well as expected, alas.
Tyler Fitzgerald, a 26-year-old shortstop for the Sacramento River Cats, says the biggest difference he’s noticed with the robo-ump is that the high fastball, a mainstay with today’s flamethrower brigade, never gets called a strike. Fitz turns to a teammate who’s just returned from a stint with the major league San Francisco Giants and poses the question; “How much higher do they call it in the bigs?” The guy holds his hands six inches apart. “That’s a HUGE difference,” Fitzgerald says correctly. “Most pitchers hate the new strike zone.” Good news, pitchers---MLB has decided to raise the top of the strike zone for the 2024 season. Everybody can use a little fine-tuning, right?
River Cats’ pitcher Miguel Yajure has a different problem. “The zone is different everywhere. It changes from field to field. We were just in OKC and it was a little bit lower, then we come back home and it’s a little bit higher. It’s almost like having a real umpire.”
With advanced enough technology, the human umpire might someday be rendered obsolete, but that day has not yet arrived. There are always unintended consequences with The Next Big Thing. and some people are now booing the robo-umps. The MLB league office doesn’t want to talk about it and neither do most of their umpires, perhaps believing discretion is the better part of valor. But then there is Calvin Baker, who started umpiring in 1996 after a lifetime of playing ball. “There were plenty of times I disagreed with the old TrackMan system. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of times I apologized for making the call. But I think the robo-umps are the future and it is what it is. Pretty soon the umpires will just be traffic cops. I think fans go to sports events partly for the controversy. If you’re just going through the motions, I think a sport loses something.”
River Cat pitcher Drew Strotman agrees. “By making it so robotic and objective, it just eliminates arguing with the umpire, which to me is part of the game. When you go to a hockey game, the crowd gets most into it when there’s human interaction of players getting angry with each other and potentially starting a fight. Big-league stadiums get loudest when there’s frustration.” Billy Evans, a Hall of Fame umpire who called balls and strikes from 1906 to 1927, once made a similar argument. “A perfect umpire,” he said, “would kill off baseball’s greatest alibi---‘WE WUZ ROBBED!’”
A 2023 Seton Hall Sports Poll found that 52% of fans approved of the new robo-ump, 28% disapproved and 20% were undecided, but we don’t know who they asked and how many of the instant responders had the time and temperament to ponder the ramifications. There is a popular video on the internet which shows a robot shooting three-pointers more accurately than Steph Curry. It’s a humanoid hunk of metal which slowly pulls the basketball back and fires unerringly time after time. A technical marvel, sure, but sport is as much about human error as it is about human excellence. We don’t watch to see athletes get it right every time; fallibility puts virtuosity in starker contrast. Seeing Shohei Otani whiff at a hanging slider is the joy of victory for some and the agony of defeat for others. For the present, the status quo prevails, the put-upon arbiters of The Show march on, dodging insults and spoiled fruit. We’ll have to wait to see what happens After Further Review.
Sorry, Artoo, We’re Sending You Down To Birmingham
Maybe it’s entirely appropriate that the robo-umps start in the minor leagues like most baseball players. You learn, hone your craft and eventually move up to the bigs, thus avoiding unfortunate nights when your optics are off a tad or someone forgot to oil your strike arm. Many of us are possessed of the notion that robots are infallible---you just flip the “On” switch, pat them on the back and send them on their way, but that’s hardly the case. A few years ago, the Henn-Na hotel in Nagasaki, Japan optimistically hired 243 robots to cover duties ranging from concierge to valets. It was a circus of errors as bellhop robots kept banging into walls and tripping over curbs and in-room assistants woke up lodgers every time they snored, saying “Sorry, I didn’t catch that---could you repeat your request?”
By now, just about all of us have heard about some kid in Sheboygan who’s taken advantage of their Google Home to order up dollhouses, four pounds of cookies and an array of colorful sex toys. News outlets have turned to Artificial Intelligence to create content, including weather information and quarterly earnings reports. In 2017, the Los Angeles Times published a story about a 6.8 earthquake which shook the Santa Barbara area. When nobody else seemed to notice, the Times checked and discovered their computer program called Quakebot got a little confused and reported a seism which had actually occurred in 1925.
Facial recognition also seems to be confusing. A couple of years ago, Amazon’s vaunted facial rec software matched 28 members of Congress to mugshots of criminals. The Scottish soccer team Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC bypassed facial recognition in favor of ball recognition, replacing their human cameramen with AI-operated ball-tracking cameras, allowing fans to follow the action simply by automatically following the ball. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, fans watching at home missed most of the scoring plays as the AI-operated cameras constantly mistook the referee’s bald head for the soccer ball. Scores of viewers called to complain, one of them suggesting the ref be supplied with a toupee.
Although it’s become clear that robots are not perfect, they’re not going away anytime soon. People will keep messing with them until they get things right. The most famous robot these days is a social humanoid lady named Sophia, developed by Hanson Robotics. She has the face of an attractive woman and the ability to hold a conversation, much like Apple’s Siri, making her disturbingly humanish. When CEO David Hanson appeared on CNBC’s The Pulse, he asked Sophia a question that’s been on the minds of many; “Sophia, do you want to destroy humans?” She smiled broadly and responded “Okay, I will destroy humans.”
In a survey of 2700 AI experts, a majority thought there was at least a 5% chance that superintelligent machines will destroy humanity. But our panel of experts predicts that if Major League Baseball supplants their current umpires with robots, there’s a 75% chance we’ll destroy them first.
That’s all, folks….
