Klapisch: The lost art of arguing with an umpire
From Bob Klapisch at The National Pastime Museum on June 6, 2016:
If you want to know what baseball was like in its low-tech, pre-PC days, run a Google search on Earl Weaver going nuclear on a hapless umpire. You can get the same result if you look up Billy Martin or Tommy Lasorda, but Weaver was the king of in-your-face diplomacy. Feigned or not, you just don’t see theater like that anymore.
That’s both good and bad for the present-day game. Baseball has matured and evolved in many ways, including how close plays are re-examined. The most obvious advancement is in technology, as instant replay is now the industry’s most important asset. Super slow-motion cameras ensure that virtually every call is correct, even if it requires a two- to three-minute delay while the replay is studied in a control room in New York.
It’s clean, efficient, and a safeguard against human error. It’s what we all want, right? We’ll never see another disaster like the 1985 World Series, and even Don Denkinger, who cost the Cardinals a championship after historically flubbing a call at first base in Game 6, would agree there’s no substitute for the computer.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/lost-art-arguing-umpire
Originally published: June 6, 2016. Last Updated: June 6, 2016.