A thread over at Calpundit got hijacked into a discussion of the designated hitter rule. Kevin seems surprised. Come now, you must realize by now that any dicussion can be hijacked into a discussion of the designated hitter rule.

I like an idea I heard recently about how to apply the rule in inter-league play: instead of playing by home team rules, play by visiting team rules. That way fans in those cities get to see a different way of playing ball.

An umpire has an op-ed in Wired complaining about a new technology being used in baseball to check how accurately balls and strikes are called. The guy is up in arms arguing that "the key to calling balls and strikes was never about adhering to a textbook strike zone," saying that the varying strike zones of umpires are "of the ebb and flow of the game" and "human factor," which "serves the game better than slavish devotion to technological precision."

Frankly, I think that's a load of crap. The reason there's a strike zone defined in the rules, is because THAT'S THE RULE. It's not the rule some of the time, or when that umpire feels like it, it's the rule all the time, for every player.

He's going on about how basbeall isn't a game of rules and regulation, it's about human idiosyncrasies. Bull. Baseball is the most rule-driven, statistically-minded professional sport there is.

He says pitchers don't like the new technology; saying that some make a career out of convincing umpires that their outside balls are just inside. Well duh, of course they don't. I'm sure Michael Jordan wouldn't have liked it if refs started calling him every time he traveled down court without even pretending to dribbble, but I bet a lot of fans (and the opposing players) would.