Baseball Without Forgiveness

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?