Chuq Von Rospach mentions a
Chuq Von Rospach mentions a new technology that can automatically detect offsides in a soccer match. He isn’t convinced that’s a good thing:
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My only real worry — a few years ago the NHL went to a “no tolerance” rule for in the crease to protect goalies, and started using video replay to judge marginal issues. The end result was a total disaster on any number of levels.
We complain and moan about referees, but referees play a significant and not-well-understood role in games. their job is not only to call penalties, but to know when to not call a penalty because it’s irrelevant within the flow of the game.
He follows that up with a question:
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Would objective refereeing of offsides in soccer be a good thing for the game? I dunno. Where else could something like this be used in sports, and would it make the game better?
Baseball might be a good answer. Major League Baseball has tried for years to get its umpires to call a consistent strike zone and the efforts finally seem to be paying off in recent years, but they’ll never be perfect. And you can always have umpires miss pitches, and miss them badly. Sure, that’s part of the game, but it isn’t supposed to be that way.
Of course, there have been calls for years to automate strike zone calls. One of Ron Luciano’s books (I don’t recall which, but probably Strike Two) mentioned an electronic system involving lasers that was tested at spring training sometime in the 1970s. The story goes something like this: The first day of the test, the machine called every pitch a ball. “Oops,” said its creators, who fixed it and came back the next day to try again. This time it called every pitch a strike. “Oops,” said its creators again, who disappeared for a few days. When they came back, they were convinced they’d fixed the bugs. They’d put a little chip inside each ball, and that got the job done. There was just one catch — the balls cost about $300 apiece. “Oh, and there’s one more thing,” said the inventors. “You can’t hit the ball — the chip will break.” That ended the experiment.