Excellent. Selig is just defending the status quo like any good bureaucrat. The particular words he uses aren't really relevant - they're not about conveying meaning, they're just taking up space where an "answer" should be.

Your imaginary conversation could also be used to answer the nonsensical "human element" defense:
Person 1: So what happened at the game?
Person 2: Oh, it sucked. The Giants won 8-7 in extra innings but there just wasn't, you know, the human element.
Person 1: No blown calls?
Person 2: Nope.
Person 1: That sucks. Too bad.
Person 2: Yeah. Ruined a perfectly good game.

If BeelzeBud is so worried about pace, how about instructing the umpires to enforce the rules already in place regarding batters stepping out and pitchers taking longer than the allotted time to make a pitch?

BRAVO!

Let the computer call balls and strikes. How fast would the game go without all the staring, pointing and arguing? Tennis seems to be getting by fine by letting the computer call the serves and letting replay decide the close calls.

The problem is that something akin to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applies. If you measure the particle to a more precise location, you end up losing other information. On top of it, you probably change what you are measuring.

BP had a beautiful article on now Brett Lawrie was "framed." Having a computer make beeps and boops to call balls and strikes would take that away. You have actually changed the skill set a catcher needs to have, and that will change the game.

Isn't part of baseball's magic fooling the human eye?

The other thing is if somehow calls became scientifically perfect, fans would be deprived of the refrain "we wuz robbed!" as the reason for losing. If is much easier to face losing if you have a convenient excuse.

Leave the game alone!

Having a computer call balls and strikes would seem post-apocalyptic. Players staring up at a screen after every pitch essentially asking 'was that to your liking, master?'. In my head it's not even done by pitch/fx, but by looking up at a robot on a balcony and waiting for its reaction, colloseum style...

Actually, I'd divide the replay debate into two subjects: Balls and Strikes, and Everything Else.

Balls and Strikes can be worked on down the line as technology improves further, but pitch calling is nominally even-handed, and players do have an ability to adapt to tonight's conditions, and that's a reasonable test of skill.

Everything Else is where the immediate attention should be. And it should be easy enough to implement. It could be done with an appeal to a central office for selected plays, like the NHL (what Matt didn't mention about their system is that they are monitoring the games at all times, and at least as important as what they review is the determination to *not* review some plays), or with real-time supervision in the park. A suggestion floated around at some point of adding a fifth umpire to each crew and sticking him in the booth with the ability to step in a review any play in the field. I would take it one step further and rotate the umpires through the booth as a fifth position and really sell it as a way to help the crew-mates rather than show them up.

I overheard any interesting conversation between two baseball fans of a certain age. Went something like this:

Person 1: There's a basic philosophical difference between the young folks today, and those of our generation.
Person 2: Sure is.
Person 1: these young fans are more concerned about getting the call right than they are with the game itself.
Person 2: I agree.
Person 1: the game has a human element, including the players and the umpires. Instant replay would destroy the human element.
Person 2: absolutely.
Person 1: if a player can convince the umpire that something happened, but it didn't, that's still an important part of the game. A time honored part of the game. It's part of the mystique of the game. Something to talk about at the office the next day.
Person 2: Truly is.
Person 1: just because we have the technology to get every call right, doesn't mean we should. These young fans don't care about the mystique of baseball. All they seem to want is for the calls to be right.
Person 2: they could have a point there.

Great article! Very perceptive, logical, pointed, and persuasive! How do we start a fan email blitz of Commish Selig to get him off his duff and moving in the right direction? Sign me up!

Doc Fisch

Isn't replay in any sport--including baseball--all about the discrepancy between the viewer's experience and the umpire's/referees'? If an ump blows a call but no camera catches it, no one will ever know the harm. Sure the losing side will swear he got it wrong--and he may have--but it's just their opinion. But when the ump blows it and cameras in real time reveal the error, then there's a problem and the game loses credibility. Football replay is time-consuming and imperfect but it increases fan interest nonetheless because it re-enforces how the game is one of inches every time a player gets stopped at the goal line. The perfect example in baseball was in the 2006 NLCS, Spezio smacked what may have been a triple or HR in Game two at Shea. The umps deliberated like 3 blind mice, meanwhile TV replays showed the whole country it wasn't a HR. The only ones who couldn't use the replay were the ones whose decisions counted! It's too late to dial things back and eliminate the cameras that give the fans a better view, so now the decision makers on the field have no choice but play catchup. The NFL gets this. When will MLB?