Got this one from Brian Buck’s blog, a story about how umpires are upset with the computerized system for measuring the strike zone. I think this machine is a horrible, awful idea. The value in baseball is as this oasis of pastoral, 19th century America. Putting in computers to validate the strike zone, using instant replay or other modern technology to affect the calls undoes what I like about it – that it is fallible, untimed, unrigorous about field dimensions. Unlike football, which has an identical gridlike structure everywhere, ballparks vary in distance and shape. Everything George Carlin says in this “Football Vs Baseball” routine holds. This computer needs to go.
[From Brian D. Buck’s Weblog]