… Rage against the baseball machine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The cost of this dehumanization will be measured in stories untold, lore foregone, enlivening arguments unmade. Robo-umps, supplemented by replay reviews, will kill off one of the sport’s idiosyncratic delights: the rhubarb — the heated disputation of an umpire’s call by the manager, oft accompanied by tobacco-spitting, finger-pointing and dirt-kicking, and ending with the manager’s ejection from the contest to a lusty chorus of boos. On a less clamorous but even more important note, individual spectators are deprived of the pleasure of grousing, grumbling or just bantering with neighboring fans over any of that game’s 200-plus ball or strike calls.
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