Next season, Major League Baseball will implement the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System. For the first time in regular-season history, batters, catchers and pitchers will have the right to challenge balls and strikes. Teams will begin each game with two available challenges and can continue challenging until they lose challenges twice.
The system has been desperately needed for many years, ever since each player’s strike zone could be seen on television screens during game broadcasts. As usual, baseball dragged its metaphorical feet addressing the problem, with the idiotic “bad calls by the umpire are part of the game” argument that traditionalists and ex-players are still using. That logic makes as much sense as defending medical malpractice because “everyone makes mistakes.” Sure, before video technology could prove a key ball or strike call was a bad one, tolerating home plate umpire mistakes (like the one that cost the Boston Red Sox Game 3 of the 1975 World Series and conceivably the Series itself) were part of the game, because nothing could be done about it. Now something can.
Ethics Alarms 