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Comment by ryoshu | Hacker News Reader

Optimize everything so you can take the soul out of it.

Look at it from the other direction. If there was a contest between two athletes or teams and it was adjudicated without bias, would you think "You know what would give this more soul? A flawed judge with poorer vision, who may or may not have been pressured or baited before the game to influence their decisions!"

Review systems for cricket and tennis seem to have enabled more crowd involvement and anticipation in the lead up to a decision being revealed.

You could turn it into a meta game. Teams of umpires :P

Tape to Tape has a team of refs as an opponent if hockey is your thing!

If the viewers didn't know it was a blown call, there wouldn't be a problem. That's how baseball worked for 100 years.

But now when the viewers can see the pitch in 1000fps 8K slow motion, they expect better from the umpires. The entire premise of sports relies on the assumption that the rules are adjudicated correctly.

The entire premise of sports relies on the assumption that the rules are adjudicated fairly.

Part of the soul of the game is learning the umpire's particular strike zone and adjusting accordingly.

I'm with OP. Fun is being replaced by data.

I agree entirely. Baseball is about the accumulation of (very) small advantages. No umpire is being unfair (whatever particular fans may think about certain umpires - though, yes, some are better than others), but each umpire is unique, and learning and adapting to individual umpires' idiosyncrasies is a dimension across which the best players can distinguish themselves. Removing that flattens the game.

I don't hate the challenge system as much as I would an entirely-automated strike zone - and I'll probably appreciate the occasional corrected call, and the game-within-a-game of when to spend your challenges - but it's all of a piece with the general flattening of baseball. The DH, and now the universal DH. Interleague play. Balanced schedules. Three true outcomes hitters. Outlawing certain defensive positioning. Maniacal pursuit of spin-rate. Manfred runners. All of these eliminate elements of the game that made it more interesting - at least from this Old Man's perspective.

(As counter-examples: I like the pitch clock, and I'm OK with enlarging the bases; those increase the premium that accrues to specific skills, and heighten the stakes of particular situations. Those are the directions in which positive changes should point.)

"The tie goes to the runner" died with instant replay, and I think that is sad. If you need multiple super slow-motion angles to determine if they were out or safe, it should be a tie, in my opinion.

I also just say watch every angle at full speed for those types of replay, no slow-mo. Keeps the magic, but let's you correct egregious calls.

Tie goes to the runner was never in the rules.

And that's what makes baseball awesome.

Everyone knows the tie goes to the runner but it's not an official rule apparently.

The soul of baseball is in the squishy parts. Quantifying the life out of it is not a good idea.

Bad calls are not “soul”. There’s plenty of flair and tradition and flavor in baseball.

if a baseball is the width of two or three baseballs away from the "zone" (dynamic based on player usually), then providing a way to challenge the call (it was called a strike when it is clearly a ball) is completely fair and retains the soul of the game. Baseball is really a game of fairness. There's no "buzzer beaters" or timed sessions. Everyone has their chance per inning to impact the game. In a game of relative fairness, adding more strict honesty when it comes to something like this will only improve the game.

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