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A small, but notable moment in baseball history occurred this week. In a US minor-league game between the San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals, the home plate umpire did not call balls and strikes. Instead, a computerized video system was used to make the determinations, which were relayed by the game's announcer to the crowd cheering on the home team—and checking out the system's performance—at Albert Park in San Rafael, California.
The system, Pitchf/x from Chicago-based Sportvision, isn't new to baseball. It already provides data for evaluating players and umpires, and it helps TV viewers see where a pitch lands relative to the strike zone. But on July 28 it was used to make actual calls, marking the first time that's happened in professional baseball.
Maybe if Major League Baseball can save money on umpires they can lower ticket prices.
(Score: 2) by bziman on Saturday August 01 2015, @09:15PM
Okay, I apologize for the confusion, takyon and Phoenix666 - if you look at the story as posted, the line "Maybe if Major League Baseball can save money on umpires they can lower ticket prices." is outside of Phoenix666's blockquote, and I therefore assumed it was written by takyon, the editor.
I'm not saying baseball is cheap - it's just the cheapest of all the major American pro sports. I wouldn't pay any amount of money for a baseball game - I much prefer local musical theater (which is still really expensive, at least where I live).
But I stick to my guns that a non-sequitor about umpire pay (which contributes only the tiniest fraction to the cost of a baseball ticket) is totally off topic in a discussion about using technology to improve the accuracy of the game. Though I know hard-core baseball fans that would counter argue that the human aspect of the game is the most important part.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 01 2015, @10:18PM
The blockquote distinguishes an excerpt from the article. The line at the end is mine. It's not takyon's fault at all.
Umpire pay is certainly not a non-sequitor to a baseball game that is umpired entirely by a computer. How could it be? There is a meme that is arising in the media now about computers and robots replacing people permanently. It's been a constant article of discussion in the Soylent and Slashdot communities for years. So if we have a real world example of how a robot/computer could replace and has replaced an entire kind of work, then how could we not discuss both the tech involved and the repercussions of the tech?
Far from being totally off-topic, talking about the impact of replacing human umpires with computers could not be more totally on topic. If we as humans, as the "tool users" (technologists) sina qua non, do not consider the effects of those tools then we utterly fail the test of having them.
Washington DC delenda est.