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photo: GETTY IMAGES (BASEBALL GAME) |
Does Baseball Need Umpires?
BY JONAH KERI
During a baseball playoff game at Yankee Stadium this year, Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins hit an 11th-inning fly ball down the left-field line that landed clearly fair, a foot inside the line. As millions looked on, umpire Phil Cuzzi, who was standing just 10 feet away, fixed his eyes on the spot and gave his signal: Foul. This blown call wasn’t the only reason the Twins lost. They were eventually swept by the Yankees, who went on to win the World Series. But all anyone could talk about that week was Mr. Cuzzi’s gaffe. It’s almost a part of baseball tradition now for a blown call to grab the focus during the postseason. But amid the uproar, there’s another fundamental question that’s absent from the debate. Do we really need so many umpires? Umpires weren’t introduced to baseball to improve the accuracy of calls—they were brought in during the 19th century to cut down on rampant cheating. Historians say players routinely pushed base runners off base, then tagged them out. Runners would occasionally run straight from first to third without touching second. Eventually, cheating tailed off—but the umpires remained. In fact, they multiplied. In the early days, the norm was one umpire, chosen by the home team. By the 1930s, baseball crews were assigned by the leagues and had three umpires each. The modern, regular-season umpire crew, which has four members, dates from the 1940s. In the postseason, when there are more cameras trained on the field, the number of umpires also expands—to six. This number, too, is a bit of a relic. It came about in 1947 when then-commissioner Happy Chandler decided that the two substitute umpires who usually came to World Series games might as well take the field, too. The idea, of course, is that more umpires means better play-calling. But this isn’t necessarily true. After that Yankees-Twins game, Tim Tschida, the umpire crew chief on duty told reporters that while there was no excuse for Mr. Cuzzi’s blown call, there was one contributing factor: Umpires spend so little time working in the outfield during the season that it can be a challenge in the postseason. Beyond the size of the umpire crews, technology has improved to the point where it’s not clear that umpires are more competent than machines. Before this season, Major League Baseball outfitted the last of its ballparks with the $10 million Pitch-f/x zone evaluation system. The system uses digital cameras to take about 25 pictures of the ball in flight between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. The audited data from this system are sent to the league, which then passes along the information to umpires to use as a training tool. Mike Port, vice president of umpiring for MLB, says that when it comes to calling balls and strikes, the umpires are about 95% accurate. But here’s the interesting part: The Pitch-f/x system’s ball and strike calls are very near 100% accurate. Earl Weaver, former manager of the Baltimore Orioles, acknowledges that calling pitches is hard work. But he says that in baseball, a game where the umpires have a huge impact on the outcome of the game, it’s crucial that the calls be correct. “If you could do everything right by technology,” he says, “it would be the thing to do.” Cutting back on umpires would also save money. Unlike the case in the NFL, where referees have outside jobs, baseball’s officials are full-time employees. Baseball doesn’t release salary figures, but experts say typical umpire pay ranges from $120,000 to $350,000 a year. Mr. Port says it’s unfortunate that the few bad calls the umpires make are the ones that tend to stand out—given that they’re generally so good. He says baseball has no plans to reduce the number of umpires or change their roles. Last summer, baseball addressed the question of umpire accuracy by instituting a replay system—but only for so-called boundary plays such as home-run calls. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig says he intends for the system to remain limited. “I think the human element is vital to baseball,” he says. “I don’t think you can stop a baseball game every five minutes to review something.” By all accounts it would be silly to do away with umpires entirely. Even with limitless replays, there could still be calls that can’t be made by machines. Even if technology could be improved to cover line calls and close plays at first base, someone would have to be on hand in case the system crashed. To really get it right, baseball would have to put sensors everywhere—from cleats and gloves to the baseball itself. At the end of the day, Mr. Port says, the whole argument about umpires comes down to this: “Do we want the tradition of 18 people on the field doing their best to help their teams win, officiated by four trained gentlemen also doing their best? Or do we want to translate over to some sort of technologically advanced video endeavor that removes human elements from the game?” That might be a question for Joe Mauer.
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