This one is a good idea, but the technology is wrong:
Balls and strikes should be determined by lasers (only those we can spare from volcano-lancing, of course). There’s no excuse for allowing the imprecision of a home-plate umpire in the 21st century.
It’s not just imprecision — it’s subjectivity. But I’m not sure how lasers would work. The strike zone varies from batter to batter (e.g., different knee and shoulder heights, and stance). I think it would be better to put in miniaturized GPS-type transponders in the balls, shoulders and knees of the uniform, and have a computer determine whether it was a ball or strike. The one in the ball would obviously have to be capable of enduring high impact… You could get adequate precision if you put a lot of transmitters in the stadium. It would also be used for ruling fouls, homers, whether the throw beat the slide, etc. It would be nice to get fallible humans out of the loop as much as possible.
The same would apply to football. Put one in each end of the ball, and an array on the players’ uniforms. There would no longer be much dispute as to where to spot, whether or not it is a first down, whether it broke the plane of the end zone, etc.
They’re just games. I actually like the idea of having human fallibility involved, as it reinforces the idea that well, it’s just a game. It’s not that important. Playing hard and well is. Winning isn’t. I mean it is, but not to the point of it being worth worrying a lot about.
Of course, I play a sport (fencing) that went to electric scoring a long time ago, so what do I know. Maybe that is the answer–wait until technology advances to make a solution trivial to institute.
You would use lasers by putting reflectors on key spots, scanning the lasers, looking for reflections and doing lidar range-finding, then a little bit of trigonometry, cf,. the Darpa Grand Challenge cars. I don’t think GPS has the necessary precision, even if you solved the problem of acquiring satellites while the antenna revolves randomly at 150 RPM or so.
When people get paid millions of dollars to play the “just games,” and millions are bet on their outcome, they are no longer “just games.”
I said “GPS-like,” not literally GPS. GPS doesn’t have the precision, but if you put the “satellites” in the stadium, I’m pretty sure it would.
Oh, people may get paid a lot by charging families $100 for an evening out, but at the end of the day it is still just a game and should be treated as such. An entertainment and divertiment.
I thought there was no betting in baseball…no crying either…
Having said that, lasers. From the side, eye-safe wavelength, in a scanning pattern like a bar code scanner, with range gates to determine if the ball was in the zone.
An interesting question, Rand. But I’m still going to say no. First, I suspect radio is inherently limited by the wavelength, which for GHz signals is in the 10 cm range. If you go to light, you’ve got nanometer resolution in principle. Secondly, the GPS system relies on some pretty smart processing on the part of the receiver, because the system is meant to work without preconsultation between receiver and transmitting system.
But why build a fancy clock and processor into the receiver, where it can get it’s little brain bashed by bat-wielding steroid junkies? Why not, instead, just reflect the signals from the target back to the transmitter, collect them there, and let your electronics sit comfortably atop the skyboxes? After all, you don’t need the information at the location of the ball — you need it at the location of the scoreboard.
Anyway, I actually agree with you: I’m just saying you put reflectors on the targets and stash the receiver somewhere safer, then move to light for better resolution, both longitudinally and transversely. But the basic method can remain the same.
Well, no, actually, you can do better if you reflect the beams, I think, because you can measure the last significant digits of your distance directly, through interferometry or heterodyning, rather than through the use of hyperaccurate and very expensive atomic clocks. That would make it much cheaper.
Well, again, I wasn’t referring specifically to GPS frequency, either — you could go to a higher one. The point of making the targets smart is to be able to know which is which. Also, it wouldn’t work that well for football, because the light could be blocked by players, etc. That’s why radio would be better than lasers. I think that microminiaturized stuff could probably take the several hundred gees of getting whacked with a bat, and the football application wouldn’t take anywhere as much punishment.
Umm. Not sure if you guys are serious, but … Wouldn’t it be simpler to measure each player at the beginning of the season to determine the relevant heights, and have the computer adjust the lasers accordingly when that player comes to bat? Pardon me if simplicity is not the goal here.
You can put a little flourescence in your reflector, or just change the frequency response a bit, and it will probably ID itself just fine. But I suspect the way you’d do it would be to use its position and history. What starts out in the pitcher’s glove is the basebal, not the bat. You get around obstacles by having multiple beams and reflectors on all sides of the players.
If you do enough of this, you can do full motion capture, which lends itself well to post-game CG enhancement. The game could be replayed in Second Life, or the World of Warcraft, with lizard or orc heads substituted for the actual players’ heads, or antlers added. You could replay it on your Wii with you seeing it from any player’s viewpoint. With good enough physics models, you could even replay it slightly differently, experiment to see if this throw or that dodge might have been more successful.
Plus you get all kinds of very detailed information about things like the exact trajectory and spin of balls, for pitcher and quarterback training. The coach could get real-time updates of the air currents at 30-foot altitudes, so he can advise the punter which side of the goal is the better aim point. With a little opto-acoustic coupling, you can pick up the mutterings of the quarterback or shortstop. Consider the commercial possibilities! The QB could say, as he fires off the pass, this heroic touchdown attempt – oof! — is brought to you by Wheaties. I had a bowl — huff huff puff — just this morning!
Or the outfielder could philosophize on his way in. You know, it’s times like this, when you’re down 47 to zip, that you have to reflect on what’s really important and lasting in life. That’s why I brush with Pepsodent, every day, for that minty fresh feeling.
Of course, we need security features, so the system isn’t abused. It would not be cool for the home team to hack the system so it beams the sound of heavy sex into the opposing quarterback’s helmet. We could prevent teams leaping and twisting themselves in a coordinated fashion so as to focus multiple laser beams at once on one spot and burn out the eyes of opposing linebackers by introducing a certain unpredictable, stochastic element to the sweep pattern.
It would be a lot easier to make the rule change “The plate is from height X to height Y.”
Neither is likely. But lasers would certainly do the job there. (If you’re putting crap in the ball, you’re going to have a firestorm about “Changing the sport” anyway.)
The umpires making mistakes is all part of the game. A random element which makes the proceedings more interesting than watching an adding machine calculate.
Otherwise, why not give players at bat robotic exoskeletons with computer targeting systems and have the ball launched via compressed air at 400mph?
I love technology. Technology is a great thing to make your life easier and more entertaining, but it shouldn’t be the solution to all problems. Re-arranging the composition of bleu cheese so it doesn’t smell so bad would also ruin the taste.
Well, technically, the announcers (rather, their producers) have been doing something like this with video analysis for some time now. It’s still not realtime, but last time I bothered to watch an inning, they had a strike zone box (proportionate to the player) superimposed over a slomo replay with a (non-hand-drawn) line tracing the path of the ball… all completed, replayed, and analyzed before the next wind-up.
They also have had Cyclops for Tennis for a couple decades or more, although that’s a much simpler and more limited system, and it’s probably moved to lasers by now.
Radio locationfinding was also used as part of the puck-tracking system that hockey had for a number of years (that itself probably led to things like magic first down lines, through its real-time superimposed imagery). So, the basic tech you described is there, it’s just a question of accurately measuring position vs. a variable target (body parts) with a much, much greater degree of accuracy.
I will suggest one thing… the presence of cameras and second-guessing *should* in theory force umps to call good, clean games, because if they blow a bunch of calls, it’s going to be all over TV.
Then how would we hate the umpire?
Actually, Barry Bonds already has the head of an Orc.
I agree with Carl. Hell in a way they already do this type of automated analysis with the TV presentation often cutting to a infographic of a player’s pitches and how it relates to the batter’s strike zone. Basically a computer could use character recognition to analyze the video stream which would likely be all you need to determine the pitch placement. Just set a standard baseline of where approximately the camera needs to be placed looking over the pitches shoulder and zoomed into the batters box. From there you’d really just be using programming that would be very similar to target acquisition and recognition software.
I’ve long thought that football could benefit from a GPS-like transmitter in the ball. It’s where the ball is at that determines the spot on the field. I would say though that the video reference line that the paint across the screen is usually dead accurate. When they do a measurement for 1st and if the ball isn’t touching the imaginary yellow line than it isn’t a 1st down.
Why not use the super slowmo replay technology already in existence and hand the coaches a couple or a few red challenge flags? That way you still get your “human” element but with the chance to reduce a majority of the more egregious errors. The replay technology would actually be even easier than football, the strike zone is a pretty predictable environment. Of course, you could also expand this to other judgement calls on the field as well, (thrown out? missed the bag? etc.) It’s not like it’ll matter if you slow a baseball game down a bit, they are already agonizingly slow anyway.
Or have they already done this? I don’t watch a lot of baseball, too boring.
Why not an x-ray laser to incinerate any DHs sent to bat?
Because, Pro, since there’s no such thing as an X-ray mirror, the X-ray laser emits just as big a blast backward as forward. It’s like those WWII movies in which you see the big back blast when John Wayne shoots a bazooka at the Nazi tanks.
So they’re really dangerous to the user, also, as well as anyone standing behind him, like his teammates or groupies. I think the consensus is that they’re just too dangerous to have on the playing field, where tempers can run high and judgment lacks cool. I recall a proposal to allow them for coaching staff only, so they could, for example, deal with an out of control player more effectively, but I think it went nowhere.
They’re also heavy, too, 2 to 3 tons. So that makes them a little awkward, even for beefy football guys.
Carl,
Use of the DH must be met by total, overwhelming force. This is all part of our strategic position to prevent the use of the DH–Mutual Assured Batting or MAB.
There has been talk of putting RFID tags in the noses of footballs for a while now, mostly for things such as pileups on the goal line that may or may not result in a touchdown.
What baseball needs is an improved instant replay system. The fiasco a week or two ago when the third base ump called a player safe after being tagged out clearly nowhere near the bag is reason enough for that.
Unfortunately, expanding Instant Replay to Balls and Strikes would make the game interminable. However, there is a significantly consistent inconsistency in the calls of some umpires, seemingly affected by donations made to them by criminal organizations. There were some REALLY bad calls made in the short part of last night’s game that I saw.
The game doesnt’ need electronic systems for balls and strikes. It doesn’t need replay for fair/foul and out calls. What it needs is system for training and retaining good umpires while getting rid of bad ones. With the current system, in good union fashion, a bad umpire gets to stick around pretty much as long as he wants and probably gets to work some postseason games.
Oh, we also need umpires to communicate and help each other out more often. It’s happening more of late but not enough. The missed double play call in game 4 of the ALCS (Posada and Cano at 3rd) was so obvious that it should have been corrected by one of the other umpires. What is the LF umpire doing in that situation if he’s not watching the play at 3rd?
Improving baseball?
Easy.
Remove 2 of the bases.
Have the pitcher “bowl” from one pitch to the other, and replace that silly round bat with an oval one, preferably made of willow.
Have two referees at either end and score runs on a simple system like the number of times a hitter can run back and forth between the bases. Given them 4 runs for something that rolls over the boundary and 6 for a home run.
Establish a variety of different games where you can play for everything from 2 or 3 hours to 4 or 5 days and, oh, this is the important bit… rename the game cricket.
I also have some suggestions for American Football and turning it back into Rugby….
I would think lasers could get in people’s eyes. Ultrasound might work. You could make home plate into a phased array and determine exactly where the ball passed over it.