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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watmath.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!credmond
From: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Playoff Comments
Message-ID: <16987@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 15:55:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.16987
Posted: Thu Oct 24 15:55:15 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Oct-85 02:35:12 EDT
References: <12900040@uiucdcs> <463@bdmrrr.UUCP>
Reply-To: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 19

>
>I don't think he did.  I think it skipped into his glove at the last possible
>second.  It was so close a call that I would say that no matter which way the
>umpire's called it, they were right.
>
 
That's exactly the point, and one reason baseball is such a beautiful,
old-fashioned, human game:  you can trust authority to be honest, and it's
human, not mechanical, authority!  If machines are ever used to judge
catches, balls-and-strikes, or out-and-safe, we'll lose much of the
game's appeal.

Somebody wrote an article a few years ago about recent presidents of the
United States, saying that the last president one can imagine as an umpire
was Harry Truman.  He (the author) suggested that as a pretty good symbol
of what's been wrong with society over the past thirty years, and I think
he may have had a point.