Spring Training has begun, and that means the the baseball season in involved in its metaphorical overture. As usual, the game is already spawning ethical controversies, and they strike principles that apply to more spheres of human experience than just baseball.

Automated Ball-and-Strike System (ABS)

Finally! After a couple of years of being tested in independent and minor leagues, a system allowing computer-assisted ball and strike calling is being tested in Spring Training with an eye toward introducing it in MLB games in 2026. The way it current works: home plate umpires still call the pitches, but a batter, pitcher or catcher (not managers) can challenge a bad call. Once a challenge is made (right now the signal is the player tapping his helmet), the scoreboard shows where the disputed pitch was, and if it nicks the strike zone when the umpire said otherwise (or missed it and the ump called a strike anyway), the call is reversed. Each team has a set number of challenges: if one fails, it is lost.

The system injects new strategy and statistical analysis into the game. The challenged pitches shouldn’t all be on ball four or strike three calls, or even necessarily in game-determining situations. The statistical difference between the batting average of a batter having a one ball, one strike count and a batter with an 0-2 count is massive, so mid-count, early innings challenges can have major effects on a game’s outcome. Batters do not have as clear a view of the strike zone as pitchers and catchers, so the system favors the defense: presumably batters will be instructed not to challenge an umpire’s call unless a mistake is egregious. Running out of challenges by the late innings of a close game will be a significance handicap.

Interestingly, Terry Francona, now managing the Cincinnati Reds, has told his veteran players not to participate in the challenge system. He reasons that since ABS won’t be used during the 2025 season, it is a distraction from the purpose of Spring Training, which is to prepare for the games ahead. (He’s right.)

Goodbye Tradition, Hello Beards

The New York Yankees announced that the team’s long-standing ban on facial hair (except neatly trimmed mustaches), is no longer in effect. The policy is more than 40 years old, and, I must confess, it was one of the only things I liked about the Yankees. The old-fashioned tradition of baseball players looking like clean-cut professionals on and off the field was part of baseball’s mystique and its “National Pastime” image. Having at least one team, the most storied team of them all, holding on to that tradition was comforting, and just maybe a teenie-weenie positive influence on public decorum, civility and respect.

Also, Good-bye “New York, New York”

The Yankees also announced that Old Blue-Eyes singing “New York, New York” would no longer be the exit music for Yankees Stadium games after the team loses. That song is 50 years old and a lot of Americans under the age of 30 probably barely know who Frank Sinatra is. Baseball has a serious generation problem as well as a demographics problem: how does it nurture a younger fan base without alienating its overwhelmingly older, white core of lifetime baseball loyalists?

In Boston, a “For the Good of the Team” Dilemma

The Boston Red Sox have a not-quite-superstar at third base: Rafael Devers, the team’s best hitter who has been kept back from the greatness predicted for him by nagging injuries. He has a rich ten-year contract with the team. Devers plays third base, but not all that well: the modern metrics score him a below-average fielder. The Sox just signed Houston Astros slugging third-baseman Alex Bregman to a rich, short term contract. He’s a great fielder at third, but theoretically could also play second where the Red Sox haven’t had a reliable regular for many seasons. Fans and sportswriters are lobbying for Devers to move from third to DH, giving the team a Gold Glove-level upgrade at the hot corner, but Devers has made it clear that he does not want to surrender his position. Teams generally don’t like having their star players unhappy. Now Devers is being condemned by some quarters for being selfish and not thinking of the team first. (Personally, I think the strongest Sox team has Devers at third and Bregman at second, where he would also be outstanding defensively.) Devers, meanwhile, says that one reason that he signed a long-term contract with Boston as free agency loomed was that he was assured—promised— by the team that he would be its third-baseman.

But ah, Manager Alex Cora says, that promise was made by the previous Boston General Manager, who was later fired. So, Cora reasons, the Red Sox are not bound by it under their new GM, Craig Breslow. Ugh. The team isn’t legally bound by the oral promise, but that promise was made to Devers on behalf of the team by its official representative. If its position is going to be that any assurances made on behalf of the team are only as reliable as the tenure of the officer making them, no player can ever trust what a General Manager or manager promises regarding the future.