Miscall

High on our list of people who cannot leave well enough alone is the man who showed up in the National Baseball league offices a couple of weeks ago with a finish-line camera he wanted to put behind first base. Nitty idea, he said. Now we can get rid of those umpires and really call the close ones. Somebody ought to get to that man, for in his earnestly misguided way he is chopping not only at the roots of the national pastime but at our very culture.

Until this f. 3.5 entrepreneur came along the baseball umpire was a valuable if not always respected citizen. At worst he was a mainstay for cartoonists. At best he was a grand figure standing upright and strong as the pop bottles whomped off his chest protector, his arms folded and jaw set, as the players slunk to the showers and the managers fumed in their dugouts. His eyes were weak but his word was law and his wrath was a sight to behold.

One of the good things about this now-obsolete umpire was that he was not always right. There was a pleasant indeterminacy about that. It left a man with a little bit of self-respect even after the third called strike got the outside corner. "You're blind," he could say. "Kill the umpire," the fans could shout. And all concerned felt a little bit better about going along with the call when they knew there was a chance the man behind the plate was wrong.

That won't work with a camera. Fans may shout "Open the back shutter" instead of "Kill the ump," but the little black box will reply by disgorging several feet of film clearly indicating that everybody is wrong and it is right. It will go straight on calling them with accuracy, and the crowds will slowly lapse into sullen silence as the little machines take over the game.

A while after that somebody will invent a boxing referee machine and a traffic cop machine and then a district judge machine, and the silence will become general. We will back down and let the Speed Graphic and the electronic computer move in to eliminate our mistakes. When that time comes they might as well close the college and put the students on learning dictation, for the sporting element, the element of mischance, the umpire element, will have disappeared. In its place will sit the unblinking machine, confident, proficient, and always right.