A pitch of my own

I shot a look over at a big screen television Friday night while at Riverside Casino waiting for the Bob and Tom Comedy tour to take stage in the Event Center.
It’s weird how many people you see that you know in places like that.
But the television had the Andre Dawson Classic on MLB Network. At the bottom was something that made my stomach feel just a little warmer.
Spring Training. I have some friends and family that will be glad the Cardinals are back on television, even sans Goldie. If you know you know.
I, for the record, am not one of those guys. Can’t stand the Cardinals. I go to Busch Stadium a couple times a year with my brother John. He didn’t plant rows of different crops next to each other, so we didn’t have to stone him.
You all know by now I’m a Reds fan and, if you don’t, then you’re not reading Beside the Point very often. My childhood centered around the Big Red Machine.
We’ve got Terry Francona now so that means at least 10 more wins on last year.
But it’s the Reds, so who knows.
The point is that spring is around the corner and baseball season is coming into focus. It’s a long season so I don’t spend every waking moment chasing Reds scores and stats like wacky Cubs and Cardinals fans. Iowans seem to flock to these two teams and then know their stats. Not me. Not anymore.
This year spring training is using the automated ball-strike challenge system or ABS. Most people know that as Automated Braking System, which is apropos because the league should hit the brakes on this. Current plans are for about 60% of the games to have the new system. Players or coaches can challenge a pitch call simply by tapping their helmets. The system’s been in place in the minor leagues where it’s being tested. If all goes well, it could be utilized in major league regular play in 2026.
MLB went to great lengths to speed the game up, and although players will have two seconds to challenge a called ball or strike, it will add time to the game. An average of about 17 seconds per challenge and that wouldn’t include extra walks. Each team gets two challenges per game so you wouldn’t think 34 seconds is too much. The kicker is they get to keep the challenges if they’re correct on the them.
My take is the officials behind the plate in the MLB do a pretty good job as a whole. Yes, some officials miss more than others. Angel Hernandez is one official who regularly gets slammed for bad calls. Hernandez is the one who ejected Steve “Mongo” McMichael from the Chicago Cubs’ radio booth after challenging one of Hernandez’s call on the air after the 7^th inning stretch.
If you watch any baseball, you’ll see the K-zone and, of course, we make a big deal out of when a pitch is called a strike but out of the zone, and vice versa. But if you really get into the data, which I didn’t, I’m just going off what I see when I have had enough sleep to actually make it through an entire baseball game, the officials do a pretty good job. If we change the game with officiating technology, aren’t we also changing the game? Is a record now for strikeouts enhanced or degraded with a computer changing human calls – the process used for all other pitching records.
Tennis uses Hawk-Eye or ELC (electronic line calling) at all its games and football uses official review. So, there is a precedent for technological assistance. But football hasn’t yet made football sensors part of the game. That would include a small sensor in the ball itself that helped identify forward progress. Why, because it took too long to get the sensor calibrated.
And isn’t this screwing the purity of the game? Men have called professional baseball games for close to 150 years. In that time, we’ve had gambling, steroids, corked bats, sign stealing, foreign substances, and the designated hitter.  We’ve screwed with the purity enough.
The game has sped up under current pitch rules, which also have screwed with what is and was baseball that I grew up on.
But we don’t need a machine checking up on our umpires. If you think this works, then why not set cameras aimed at bases and just let them make the safe/out calls, as well. Then we can eliminate umpires completely and watch the MLB not influence reduced prices despite reducing payroll.
The point is this. Baseball used to be America’s pastime. We relied on umpires and let’s face it, they were part of the game. A good dust-up with Lou Pinella brought more color to the game - Early Weaver, Billy Martin. Sure, it will be a long time before we don’t have umpires, but digital pitch confirmation opens the box.
Faith in the game.
We’ve seen imperfection already and we haven’t stopped it. Leave baseball to the experts on the field.
Let’s play ball.
And some other ball was played on Saturday. It wasn’t post-season basketball. It was a pickup game of kickball with about 20 kids and a dozen local law enforcement officers. The event was set up by Fort Madison Police Chief Cody Potthast. The kids had a blast and ate some pizza and got to know local law enforcement from Fort Madison, Keokuk PD, and Lee County Sheriff’s office in a different environment than on the streets where the engagement is more often than not, a negative experience.
And the game was called by humans – But that’s Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.