Deep Thoughts

Alex K- Where is your proof?  You seem pretty certain that it was an accident, how do you know?

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Seriously, though, it’s just a simple inference to the best explanation.  A man was standing ten feet away from the incident (one needn’t be a professional to see the ball fall on one side of a line or another) and he said that the opposite of what happened happened.  The default explanation for such a totally false statement is intent until one provides evidence otherwise.

All—David has been beating this drum all year. He thinks umps are crooked, he believes MLB has the fix in, and he is adamant that people prove that otherwise rather than he provide any evidence for his claims.  You try to convince him how ridiculous it is, but he is utterly immune to reason on this point.

All—Craig has been beating this drum all year. He thinks umps are sacred, he believes MLB is incorruptible, and he is adamant that people prove that otherwise rather than he provide any evidence for his claims.  You try to convince him how ridiculous it is, but he is utterly immune to reason on this point.

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Alright, enough screwing around.  Wouldn’t the fact that I’ve been “beating this drum all year”, like, support the thesis?  This means that I provided incident after incident after incident after incident (which I did)….and yet people still refused to consider the potential. 

The very fact that people refuse to consider it is proof that MLB knows they can get away with it.  “Our sheep customers have invested so much idolatry into the myth of our incorruptibility that we can do anything we want.” 

Like I wrote before, you see the same thing in government, where we now routinely have banana republic-style assassinations (I could literally list a dozen since 2003)….where private investigators are hired to investigate the murders and then soon run screaming from their own investigations yelling, “Look, I can’t finish this job – here, take your money back!!!”….

….The murderers know they’re inoculated from even being investigated, let alone prosecuted, because of this same reason: the myth of the Incorruptibility of the Powerful.  (Actually, I think it’s people pretending that the powerful are incorruptible, but they all know it’s bulls—-.)

(Incidentally, the late, great Michael Crichton was going to right a book about people’s “secret, private wish to live in a totalitarian state”.  Unfortunately, cancer took him, but the idea still stands.) 

Let me ask you this: where were all the ESPN and Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports reporters in the late-90’s and early-00’s when NBA game-fixing was rampant and completely obvious?  Answer: they were right where THT and all of you guys are right now: participating in the corruption by pretending it didn’t exist.

It’s cool.  MLB=WWE=THT’s Happiness.

ESPN glossed over it (and it’ll be forcefully forgotten within 20 minutes….ago).  They aired a clip of the lead umpire saying that the umpire will not be penalized because….(wait for it)….he feels bad. 

‘Course, it was done intentionally.  Saying that declaring that fair ball foul was an accident is as abjectly bogus as saying that this Shysterball post was typed as Craig accidentally fiddled with his keyboard.  Kinda like, ya know, putting three bullets in Pat Tillman’s forehead from 30 yards away.  “It was an accident!!!”

There is such a thing as the work of an intelligent agent, and then there are the works of randomness (such as an accident).  Being able to distinguish between them is not just the work of police detectives, insurance fraud investigators, and archaeologists….it’s a part of basic everyday human reasoning.

Alas, this is America.  In modern day America, servility before authority trumps human honesty.

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On another note….A-Roid is a fraud and was only good because of steroids and must be banned from baseball!!! A-Rod is a clutch hero!!!

Did someone lose their hat last night?

David- I wasn’t the one making unsupported claims. That means I don’t have to offer proof.

I don’t know for sure if the fix is in or not. I do, however, know that you don’t know either. That’s all my comment was saying.

Alex,

That makes sense.  But, like I said, this was so facially bogus that I think that the obvious, default explanation is corruption, not stupidity.

If you were wearing a red shirt and I said “You’re wearing a blue shirt”, you wouldn’t immediately assume it was a mistake, you’d assume that such a total mistake was done intentionally.  Same idea here.

Like I wrote earlier, detecting intelligence vs. randomness is a fundamental thought activity we all do all the time.  I guess modern Americans just bypass it when they’re facing powerful entities.

David catches the real story. And good for A-Rod. He’s always been good, and now he’ll be recognized again.

For the record, I’m an O’s fan and would like nothing more for him to fail and be an albatross for years to come. But my second biggest wish is for jerk journalists to eat it.

Hey David, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

Basically, the fundamental attribution error is a proven, observed phenomenon wherein humans too frequently attribute behavior to personality instead of circumstance, i.e. “this person is late, he must lazy,” instead of “this person is late, maybe there was traffic.”  Or: “this umpire made a bad call, he must be crooked,” instead of “this umpire made a bad call, maybe he missed it.”

I’m all for instituting replay and computerized ball and strike calls, just for the sake of accuracy. But until you come up with actual proof of fixing, your accusations only hurt the cause, because they seem so baseless.

I realize that I’m probably arguing with a dining room table here, but I thought I’d give it a shot.

That’s the worst strike zone umping I can ever remember seeing. C B Bucknor’s rep only worsens, and he got a playoff nod. Wow what a system.

We saw pitches called balls and then strikes one pitch later, and that happened all night. Balls almost a foot outside to lefties called strikes. And Ron Darling, after a ball six inches too high was called a strike, saying that the ump had called it consistently all night, when just a minute before the same pitch location was a ball. All in cahoots, all insiders refusing to criticize a bad system and bad performances, just to keep up appearances.

You gotta do something to get all the calls right and let the players determine the outcome of games and of championships, not umpires or other officials. As we see in Tennis, the proper use of technology virtually eliminates arguments and doubt. The time is now.

Wooden,

In terms of your aims in life, you’re right, I don’t really have the same purpose as you so I guess you could call me useless.

Chill out, David.  It was a reference to this.  I mean, I suppose you still have reason to feel insulted, but at least now you know the context.

I’ve never read the Design Inference, but I can only assume it requires more data and analysis than you’ve put into this to determine whether or not something is random.  Maybe I’m wrong, but please actually prove it to me, instead of using specious reasoning.

That being said, I do agree with you on the need for changes in the officiating system.  I’m not completely certain that these umpires are especially incompetent—it may just be that this is the normal level of human error—and I’m reasonably assured that there isn’t any illegal activity involved.  Either way, if there is technology available to reduce poor play-calling, it should be utilized.  It needs to be utilized.

Dan wrote: “I do agree with you on the need for changes in the officiating system.”

Roll call for posters in this thread stating that the umpiring system needs to be eliminated and rebuilt:

Grant*
Chris W*
David
Dan Friedman
John Ziccardi

That’s five posters just here in this thread alone.  Maybe THT should take a bigger poll on this?  I could make an argument for the “Yay” side.  Hey, if THT wanted to, they could form a fan’s union and everybody could sign a petition vowing to cut back on their MLB expenditures until a system is in place to eliminate the flagrant incompetence and/or corruption we’ve seen in MLB umpiring.

*Assuming I interpreted their comments correctly.

Let’s just say that expanded instant replay would render the distinctions between corruption and incompetence relatively meaningless.

I would also like to see some type of replay system to minimize the potential for corruption and/or incompetence.

I’m just not going to say that there is corruption with no proof.

“A system could minimize the potential for corruption and/or incompetence.  No system could be totally airtight, but it could be as close as humans can get.”

Of course, hence my use of the term “relatively.”

“Damn.  I feel bad for the guy still, though.  We’ve all made countless mistakes at our jobs (some worse than this), I’m sure.  Fortunately, none of my mistakes have been on national broadcasts.”

I know!  Like, take poor Tim Donaghy.  Here’s a guy who was making all these mistakes and, just ‘cause he was in a position with high visibility, everybody was pouncing all over him for the mistakes.  He’s the victim, not the people on the blunt end of those “mistakes”! 

In all seriousness, I guess that there’s some basic psychological explanation that people always respond like this, by making the perpetrator into the victim.  I think it’s just a lot easier than it is to acknowledge the powerlessness we all have over the corruption.  (I noticed that ESPN.com and their televised coverage both advocated the same idea: it was an “accident” and we should feel sorry for him.  Then, they compound the idiocy by saying that it was actually the Twins’ fault because, even though the umpire indisputably cost them a run, they “failed to capitalize on lots of opportunities!”  Well, no, they actually succeeded at taking an 11th-inning lead.  MLB stole it from ‘em.)

David, would you please stop conflating the disbelief in this conspiracy with the disbelief in any conspiracy?  It really weakens your point and makes you look foolish.

I hate the Internet.

OK, I gave the Internet another chance.  Turns out I still hate it.

That was not the point I was trying to make.  I’m saying that Cuzzi was looking for the ball, and when Cabrera deflected it, he lost the ball for a nano second.  He wasn’t looking at Cabrera, so he wouldn’t know if he was in fair or foul territory.  The deflection causes him to lose that ball for a second, so he isn’t sure if its a fair or foul ball, because when the ball is bouncing up, its now in foul territory, heading further foul.  So he makes a call based on that.  Wrong call? Absolutely.  But there is enough evidence there that he isn’t one of those umpires from the Buffalo Wild Wings commercial.

Well ofcourse whenever there is a human element involved there is a chance for corruption.  Who exactly would program these computers for judging strike zones?  Other computers or humans? So can’t a computer system be hacked by a human, and alter the parameters of a strike?  If a ball on the corner for one team is reprogrammed to be shown one inch further outside, would you be able to tell the difference?  If you go to all computer based system, then there is more chance of corruption because all of them can be hacked. 

But no, no one makes mistakes!!! AWAY WITH HUMANS!

the burden of proof is on the accuser.  that’s not a modern interpretation of the rule of american law, this has been taught in civics classes for a long, long time…and saying that folks who point to this and agree with it are modern wimps who lay down in front of authority is an insult to folks who’ve sworn to uphold the consitution and lay down their lives for our way of life.  we are a country of laws, and this is one of the most basic.

on the other hand…boy, what a shitty call.  i’m all behind using technology to improve on human error.

I never said conspiracy.  I stated facts and you guys started talking about conspiring.

I do absolutely suspect that there is corruption in MLB umpiring recently, but I don’t know what last night’s umpire’s motive was for that particular choice to lie.

“Unfortunately, the games we watch and play REWARD deceptive behavior and practices.”

That’s actually one of my pet peeves about professional baseball.  Players who fool umps are lauded for having done something good.  I hate that. 

So yes, in my perfect world, Melky admits to the ump that he touched the ball, and the ump changes the call (well, in a perfect world Cuzzi makes the right call in the first place).

Calling balls and strikes is a complex task, with the ball traveling around 90 MPH through a three-dimensional box with a catcher obstructing the ump’s view.  That can’t be easy, but I would expect the best in the world to be better at it than they are.

Calling a ball fair or foul from ~25 ft. away, especially one that glances off the fielder’s glove and STILL lands several inches fair – well, that was just gross incompetence.  I’m for the use of replay to get those calls correct.