Mr. Umpire, you will no longer be the Emperor of Home Plate in 2026.
As the playoffs begin in the Major Leagues, I have been pondering how next year’s rule change, which gives teams two challenges on balls and strikes per game aided by 12 automated cameras, will affect the baseball that I love
My daughter Sarah called from California to ask me about my feelings regarding the umpire’s hegemony over home plate being eroded. She’s a rabbi and is preparing her sermon for the Jewish High Holidays. She figured it had to have some connection in my creative cortex to the holidays.
“Sarah,” I exclaimed on the phone, “what will happen to the make-up calls?”
In traditional old-school baseball, if an umpire made a glaring mistake on a ball and strike call, which the catcher, batter, and pitcher all knew was obvious, they pointed it out to him in a subtle way — so as not to show him up to be totally incompetent to the fans.
Then, on the following pitch, he would make up for it by making a call that would help the team that had been damaged by the previous bad call.
The new system with high-speed cameras will have no programming for “make-up calls.” There is only “right and wrong,” and no asking for forgiveness for an incorrect call by the machines.
I thought my daughter would find this useful as she wrote her sermon for a holiday that is about forgiveness.
Another important aspect of baseball which may be changed is “framing” by catchers. In recent years, the deception by the catcher by moving his big glove to disguise the pitch location has become a prized skill.
Framing is now a talent highly valued in catchers, graded by computers, and has a significant effect on a catcher’s pay.
The 12 cameras installed by Major League baseball in every field will give the actual location of the pitch without it being hidden from the umpire by a clever catcher’s glove movement.
Plate umpires are often sneered at by fans, but they have a very tough task with pitchers throwing curveballs, changeups, split-finger fastballs, and 100 MPH hummers. There have been umpire tyrants over the years like Joe West, who was also head of the Umpires Union. West seemed to delight in making atrocious calls and throwing out managers and players who complained.
But umps like West and Hall of Famer Al Barlick, who umpired Jackie Robinson’s debut and was legendary for his loud and decisive calls, added color to a game that can often drag.
The cameras with challenges will hopefully bring accuracy and less deception, which is generally a good thing for the game. But the old Cubs fan in me will miss “Cowboy Joe” West (he was a country and western singer during the offseason). Even if he was a nasty show-off.
And the “make-up call,” an integral part of the game’s humanity, may become a forgotten gesture of forgiveness.
Question: What was the worst call in sports you can remember?
6 Comments
Additional down given to Colorado vs. Missouri resulting in game winning TD for Colorado. Refs couldn’t even count on their fingers to 4.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/25-years-before-vines-and-gifs-there-was-the-fifth-down-game/
Bad calls? I’m an F1 Race fan. AT the last race of the 2021 season, when either Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen could win the title by winning the race, near the end of the race, there was a crash at the back that caused a safety car. That should have either ended the race, (Lewis had led the whole race), or allowed everybody to pit for tires and restarted with a lap or two to go, in the positions they were in. Instead, they let selective drivers pit and regain position at the final lap. Max came out of the pits on brand new tires and flew by on the final lap to win the race and the title. It was a poor decision on race control – and Lewis was robbed.
1995 World Series… Joe Brinkman’s 24″ wide home plate… -Albert Belle: “The one thing that stood out was that we really didn’t like the fact that Tom Glavine really wasn’t throwing the ball over the plate and they kept calling it for strikes off the plate. We were basically standing on the plate forcing him to throw it on the plate and he still didn’t throw it over the plate. And they kept calling those pitches strikes.
“Anybody who was throwing the ball over the plate, we were pretty much able to beat except Glavine. That’s what made him successful. He kept throwing the ball right off the plate and they kept calling it. I mean we were basically standing on the plate. He kept throwing it out there and kept getting the calls and we lost to him twice.”
No offense to my favorite Cubs fan, but last night’s 9th inning Xander Bogaerts strikeout versus Brad Keller was a brutally bad call.
Didn’t see it! High holidays!
Heard some of it. Great game. Too late for a make up call! 😂
In the words of the Great Mariano Rivera after he gave up the game winning home run 25 years ago in the World Series (hopefully I’m getting this right) “THAT’S BASEBALL!”
NBA Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls vs Knicks (the year that Michael Jordan was gone) the infamous Hugh Hollins (worst ref ever) calls a foul at the end of the game giving the Knicks 3 shots and the Bulls lose.
Who knows though, if the Bulls won that year, would Jordan have come back? Probably.