Category Archives: Sports

THE EXCITING GAME WITHOUT ANY RULES—FOR COLLISIONS AT SECOND BASE. Utley’s slide, as Brian Kenny points out in his post, was plainly in violation of the text of the applicable baseball rule, as Joe Torre found in suspending Utley for … Continue reading →

THE TROUBLE I PREDICTED HAS TURNED OUT WORSE THAN I HAD THOUGHT. In my post of two years ago about the prospect of instant replay, I said about plays at second base: “…instant replay would presumably enforce the rules as … Continue reading →

THE RULE PROBLEM AT SECOND BASE. I posted here two years about the problems that might occur with introducing replay on plays at second base and on the dangers of the collisions that were permitted on plays at second base. … Continue reading →

WHY DO UMPIRES LET CATCHERS FRAME PITCHES SO OFTEN? A year ago, I described here some of the things that catchers do to persuade umpires that a ball was really a strike. I posted here about the recent emphasis on … Continue reading →

RECOGNIZING THAT THE STRIKE ZONE HAS THREE DIMENSIONS. I posted here about misgivings I had about the accuracy of the camera and the related algorithm which are used to call balls and strikes. One reason was that the strike zone … Continue reading →

MORE SUPPORT FOR HAVING COMPUTERS CALL BALLS AND STRIKES. I posted here a few weeks ago about how all the balls and strikes in an independent league game had been called by a computer. Now Cork Gaines on the Business … Continue reading →

FAT PITCHERS (COMMENT). My nephew, Andrew Schaefer, picked up an error in my post on Terry Forster and what a good hitting pitcher he was. The third paragraph confuses Forster’s lifetime at bats with his much greater lifetime figure for … Continue reading →

IS THE COMPUTER BETTER THAN THE UMPIRES? Although I have long been sympathetic to efforts to call balls and strikes more accurately, I found K.M.McFarland’s article somewhat disquieting. McFarland points out the major problem: “…the cameras stop tracking the ball … Continue reading →

HAVING A COMPUTER CALL BALLS AND STRIKES. I posted here a year ago about Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt’s position that a computer and not an umpire should call balls and strikes. Well, it’s happened. This article on the Wired … Continue reading →