Hahahahaha
May 29th, 2003 at 11:36 am by Susan
How can you not love the irony of this:
Another umpire said he and his colleagues had to change their strike zones from QuesTec park to QuesTec park. “For years, you’re reacting to what happens; you call what you see,” he said. “In a QuesTec city, you say, ‘What is the machine going to say?’ not ‘What was that pitch?’ Pretty soon you’re umpiring a video game, not a baseball game. It affects your mind-set of what you’re doing out on the field.”What makes the system worse, this umpire said, is that the strike zone, which is established by the computer operator, varies from park to park, from at-bat to at-bat with the same batter and sometimes even from pitch to pitch.
Excuse me while I spit out a big wad of gum…years ago, I interviewed a group of professional umpires in Clearwater. We had an interesting chat about the floating strike zone - only after I promised not to use their real names.
Catcher passes gas in the ump’s direction? Shrink the strike zone. Batters taking too long to swing at a pitch? Ditto. “Anyone who tells you we don’t adjust the strike zone is a liar,” one said.
Imagine a football game in which the goals are contingent on where the refs think the goalposts should be - as opposed to where they actually are. Baseball. See why I love it?
