Electronic umpiring? No one wants to yell at a robot

Today’s question: I’m old and cranky, and I love my baseball. But I hate to see a game decided by a “blind” umpire. With all the advances, why can’t they institute electronic balls and strikes? I missed last Sunday’s Diamondbacks game, which they lost, but apparently there were some questionable calls because that evening and the next day, I got a bunch of questions along these same lines.

The real question is how are Major League Baseball umpires evaluated and are they ever disciplined?

First of all, in defense of umpires: Oh, yeah? Let me see you do it, Mr. Big Mouth. Umpiring is a very difficult job.

For the past several years, every pitch in major league baseball has been recorded by a batch of hightech cameras, every ball and strike monitored. MLB also uses a crew of umpire supervisors and observers that check on umpire performance in every game.

As far as I know, no MLB umpire has ever been out and out fired, but some have simply not been offered contracts for the next season.

And umpires have been suspended for a few games at a time, usually for what are called “situational” incidents, such as arguments with players or managers.

The numbers vary, but as best as I can tell, MLB umpires have an overall accuracy rate of around 85 percent.

Yes, the technology exists to have robot cameras make all the calls in a game, but think about it: Is that really what you want?

What would follow? Robot players? Let’s stick with humans. They make the game more interesting.