Recovering Ballplayer: Armando Galarraga and the Future of Umpiring

"It's all about you ain't it? You think all these fans came to see you umpire tonight don't you!?"

In 10 years as a professional baseball player I heard red-and-blue-faced managers level variations of this rant at umpires who seemed eager to be part of the show. This type of umpire is a manager's recurring nightmare. Umpires are supposed to be invisible.

One of my coaches said this following line (I actually removed an expletive): "You want to get your fucking picture taken for your fucking baseball card you motherfucker? You don't get a fucking baseball card!"

By the time they arrive in the Major Leagues, bad umpires have their egos clipped and cropped by their supervisors and by the managers of teams on losing streaks. Though most umpires eventually metamorphose into impressively accurate invisible butterflies, even the best umpires can't help leaving their mark.

Many major sports heavily rely on human-enforced fouls placed in the hands of officials. But instant-replay technology can't always conclusively judge fútbol, football or basketball fouls, because a lot of these calls are subjective. Even if replay were used in those sports, it would be extremely difficult to apply in real-time without disrupting the flow of the action. However, baseball's unique slow pace provides an opportunity to keep officiating from influencing the outcome of its games more effectively with technology. Baseball is the only major team sport that could be entirely electronically officiated. Why balk at this possibility?

Many warned instant replay in baseball was a Pandora's box that should remain closed. Baseball comes with hang-ups of its own pastoral aesthetics, which are widely considered to make the game great in some romantic, unquantifiable manner. People treat baseball like it's the expensive Williamsburg faux-dive bars of major sports with Edison lamps, truffle fries and at least one cocktail featuring an egg white. Baseball is proud of its leather and wood fetishes and is also quite proud that its uniformity over a long history makes it possible to legitimately compare players from different eras through the lens of its beloved statistics.

But the Armando Galarraga Incident was the visceral nightmare, like the sinking of the Lusitania that validated the use of instant replay to keep America safe from the tyranny of bad umpires. As a result, baseball woke up to the need to embrace, if not the future, at least the present. For those who don't remember, Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game when first base umpire Jim Joyce missed a call that cost Galarraga—a marginal major league starter pitching the game of his life— the greatest pitching achievement in baseball.

The Galarraga Incident—which was made more compelling by Armando's grace not only as he saw Jim Joyce make the wrong call in real-time, but in press conferences afterward—resonated so deeply in baseball that the last resistance from "paperback books over e-tablets 4eva" baseball traditionalists fell on deaf ears. Galarraga was "robbed"—it just wasn't fair. MLB didn't just claim umpire errors are part of the game; the league stepped in to ensure something like this would never happen again.

Baseball becomes less of a game when it becomes a business with billions of dollars at stake. We only harken back to the idea of baseball as a "game" in order to lighten the mood when we get carried away. With instant replay, umpires are under considerably less pressure to get the call right. I remember one umpire, apologetic after botching a call that resulted in me striking out in what was probably a 10-pitch at bat, ranted emotionally next time I came to the plate about "the worst feeling for an umpire—when you ruin players' hard work." He sounded like he might cut himself, and I didn't exactly hold him back from the make-up call ledge because Charlie Morton had great stuff that night.

In my experience, many umpires just wanted to belong on the field. It is certainly anxiety-inducing to inhabit the same space as players who are furious with them, especially when the calls they make can impact a player's career. Players and managers will spend entire seasons angry at umpires over certain calls. But instant replay means it's virtually impossible to be responsible for ruining a game. The pressure is gone. Today, umpires are but animate kitsch on the field, like English ColdStream guards carrying swords instead of guns, existing mostly to keep up rustic appearances.

That is, except for the home plate umpire, who represents the last of baseball's human element, whose humanness makes the outcome of games more of a subjective truth than an absolute truth. The original electronic umpire, QuesTec, was developed and used to evaluate umpires. It was promptly eclipsed by Pitchf/x, a system that pinpoints pitch location (not to mention movement, velocity, and spin rate) in real-time. But like any technology, Pitchf/x is perpetually stuck in the purgatory between beta and a potentially perfect future; as a result, it's maligned for being imperfect even though it is currently more accurate than any umpire. The league could easily go all the way with its fairness fetish if it allowed Pitchf/x to call balls and strikes.

For instance, it would be easy to equip a home plate umpire with a device that could seamlessly prompt the umpire's call while preserving the spectacle of the umpire and his supporting cast. Finally, a possible use for Google Glass that wouldn't creep people out! If baseball finds Google Glass too modern looking, there's nothing more American than a discreet Secret Service earpiece that beeps for a strike prompting the umpire to strike his pose.

Though home plate umpires have been known to have certain diagnostic tendencies they (attempt to) levy consistently, there are also well-documented biases that favor veteran players, the home-team, and even certain races. Home plate umpire-doled affirmative action is a rejected Key and Peele sketch that the general public, let alone the culturally-lagging baseball world, probably isn't even ready to joke about. Home-team preference promotes a better atmosphere in every stadium, which is not only good for business, but is also an advantage that (in principle) should neutralize itself over the course of a season.

The reason you shouldn't expect MLB and its Daddy, the union, to address this blind spot any time soon, and maybe ever, is because umpires' veteran bias is an invisible hand that protects baseball's recognizable players. This bias makes less established players pay dues, it allows pitchers of repute to pitch longer into their careers to more benevolent strike zones, and it allows older hitters with diminished bat speed to compete later into their careers with the advantage of a more manageable strike-zone. Though this bias may be slight, it certainly makes a difference given baseball's high volume of repetitions.

World-class hitters freak out over perceived umpire error because it voids the strike zone discipline they've developed over time, and not even a season-long sample size guarantees fairness. A hitter's "good-eye" and a pitcher's pin-point accuracy could be dependably rewarded using technology. Entire seasons hang on the way single pitches are judged. Ben Revere took a 2-1 fastball from Wade Davis in the the deciding game of last year's ALCS that was clearly off the plate. But the pitch was called a strike. As a result, Revere faced the best reliever in baseball with two strikes. That pitch could have cost the Blue Jays the World Series. This scenario isn't really any different from when Joyce ruined Armando Galarraga's perfect game. With so much at stake, why not go all the way with replay?

Baseball doesn't need the human element calling balls and strikes in order to be unfair and imprecise. It already has the tragedy of the perfectly struck line drive hit right at a player, the duck farts and dying quails falling just beyond the reach of infielders. Poorly-batted balls can win a World Series. This is the unforgiving, random sensibility of baseball that makes it great. But baseball is also great when players, and not umpires, control the game. Besides, there will still be plenty tough luck and randomness to go around.