Toronto Blue Jay Bo Bichette is tagged out at first base by Los Angeles Dodger Freddie Freeman after confusion over a strike call during the second inning of Game 3 of the World Series on Monday in Los Angeles.David J. Phillip/The Associated Press
This will be the last World Series that is wholly human-powered. Currently, the video replay set-up asks one person to judge another person’s work.
Beginning next year, Major League Baseball will introduce an Automatic Ball-Strike System (ABS) that determines definitively which is which. Hitters, pitchers and catchers will be able to use two challenges per team per game. Whatever the machine decides stands.
On Monday night, that might have mattered a lot to the Toronto Blue Jays. In the second inning, with the score at 0-0, Daulton Varsho got what he thought was a fourth ball. He began to mime the universal sign of a walk – stripping off his protective gear.
Then he looked back, wondering why he hadn’t heard anything from the home plate umpire. Then he turned to take his base again. Then he stopped again.
While all this was happening, Bo Bichette was standing halfway between first and second. Turns out the pitch – which was up and out of the zone – was a called strike two. Bichette was therefore illegally off his base. Dodgers catcher Will Smith had to alert the pitcher, Tyler Glasnow, about what was up. Glasnow threw to first. Bichette, looking badly confused, was tagged out.
Varsho eventually walked. The next man up, Alejandro Kirk put a ball into the right-field corner. Varsho got to third and was stuck there. Bichette would have scored.
It’s extrapolating some, but had it stood, that run would have won the Jays the game in regulation innings, and the World Series would currently look very different.
This is a problem, but it doesn’t need fixing.
Robot umps will make things more correct, but that doesn’t equal better. It will only add layers of bureaucracy to our games, making them more like work.
Toronto Blue Jays’ manager John Schneider argues a call with home plate umpire Mark Wegner during Game 3 of the World Series.Brynn Anderson/The Associated Press
There is already something ridiculous about replay in baseball. When is a ball ‘in’ the glove? When does a cleated foot ‘touch’ the bag? Is it the cleat? Or the foot? Or do you have to see the bag compressed? And how soon after it is ‘touched’ does that happen?
They had a couple of these sorts of replays last night and after watching them a dozen times, anyone’s honest answer would be, ‘I can see it both ways.’
Umpires shouldn’t be seeing both sides. They’re working in real time. Failure is part of it. Alongside achievement, it is the wellspring of sports’ tension. A game that does not contain within it the possibility that someone will be wronged, even horribly, loses a huge source of dramatic impact. Then we’re playing Tetris.
It’s great when a baseball manager comes into a postgame press conference steaming so hard it’s a wonder his hat stays stuck to his head. It’s even better when a player loses his bottle, and that feeling moves contagiously to a crowd, and everyone is suddenly getting a little more value for their entertainment dollar.
Nobody goes to a game to see their team win. If that was the expectation, no one would go at all.
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They go for that possibility, as well as the implied certainty that things will happen there that will amaze and delight them. That isn’t always a good result for the home fans, but it tends to even out over time.
There is no such thing as an umpire conspiracy. There’s just humans doing what humans do – getting a lot of things wrong, even the ones they’re supposed to be experts at.
Eventually, once this generation of umpires has lost its collective bargaining power, the robots will do all the work in baseball. Plays like the one that gazzumped Bichette are moving us in that direction.
What a sad, anodyne viewing experience that will be.
‘Was that a strike?’
‘Obviously not. The horn didn’t blow.’
Umpire Adam Hamari calls Los Angeles Dodgers’ designated hitter Shohei Ohtani out on a steal attempt during the ninth inning of Game 3.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
Nothing will go wrong, so there will be no good reason to pop off your couch in a fit of cathartic rage, and no reason to text your brother that you knew this would happen and why is it always your team, and seriously, is this guy stupid or something? And then you talk to him for a half hour about other things.
The whole point of sports, as best I can tell, is not the sports. It’s to get us talking to each other about sports. Without things to yell at each other about, I fear that that impulse will decline.
In this world, we will all meet, in the Orwellian fashion, to discuss what went right and how things will all go right again tonight. How wonderful. A world without errors, unless it’s the players kicking a ball into the outfield, which isn’t something you can get angry about, only sad.
If you’ve got nothing to be angry about, why bother? Watch the fireplace channel. The house never burns down. All is as it should be.
If the Jays want to win the World Series, robots won’t save them, now or in the future. Eventually, they will have to cash some of the 19 (!!) players they left on base on Monday night.
Or, barring that, maybe don’t wander off the bag until the guy you think has just walked is close enough to tell you that that’s what’s happening.
The best way to fix any mistake is to automatically assume it’s your own, because you’re the only one who has a say in the repair.