Lots of talk at the start of these playoffs about flawed umpiring in baseball. (Didn't we just do this with World Cup soccer?) Anyway, this article made me think of the following excerpt from David James Duncan's exceptional book, The Brother's K. In the excerpt, Papa's character 1) demonstrates the challenge that the human element presents to the game of baseball and 2) makes a clear (and maybe accidental) case as to why instant replay would not clean up - but instead reinvent - the game.
From the Brothers K, by David James Duncan:
I was perfectly honest: I shrugged.
"Think about it!" he huffed. "Say we make our rectangle about the size of the strike zone on a six-foot hitter. This leaves out shorter and taller hitters, that's an obvious defect. But the deeper defect, the crucial defect is, where the hell is the strike zone on a six-foot hitter? Where is it on any hitter?"
I thought about it, as commanded, but was forced to shrug again. But this time Papa cried, "Exactly!" and whammed me happily on the back.
Bewildering as all this was, my confusion on another point had vanished: the reason my father did not wax lyrical about warm spring nights or baseball fever was that he wasn't the poet, he was the topic. Papa didn't present the case for baseball, he represented it, and to stand in front of him wondering if the scent of mown grass and plum blossoms made him think of baseball was like asking a bloodstained man with a fly rod and ten dead trout on a stringer if he ever thought about fishing. "The reason no one can say where the strike zone is," he said with vehemence, "is that the actual strike zone has almost nothing to do with the width of the plate or the size of the hitter. The real strike zone is located somewhere else entirely. Isn't it, Kade? Isn't it?"
Heck if I knew. What I did know was that he'd begun to remind me of someone. But before I could think who, he was proclaiming, "Damn right it is! The strike zone that matters, the only one we've got to work with, really, is the one locked up inside the skull of the plate ump. And that, m'boy, is why it's no rectangle, no well-defined shape, no sort of plate-wide knee-high armpit-low configuration at all. A strike zone is a damned illusion is what it is, Kate. It's a figment. It's a geometrical will-o'-the-wisp perched on a twig inside the ump's law-abiding little brain."
I had it: the intensity, the thought-swamped smile, the "I dare you to disagree" manner, the enlarged pupils - for the first time I could remember, Papa was behaving exactly like Everett. One one of his late-night philosophical jungle cruises, no less. I was flabbergasted. Could my calm, soft-spoken father be the genetic source of the beans my big brother was so full of? It didn't seem possible. But there was no time to speculate: he'd taken his rag, erased every line from the mattress, said "Look here!" in a way that sounded like I damn well better, and quickly chalked up a yard-high, upside-down pear. Like the mandibles of a giant ant, his gaze grabbed and held me. "Know what that is?" he demanded.
I was terrified to confess that I didn't. But Papa saved me the trouble. "Of course you don't!" he bellowed.
I shook my head, nodded, shrugged, giggled, and threw in a Whew! for good measure. Meanwhile Papa's face had broken out in a very Everett-like leer. "That," he said, "is a genuine Josh Kendall strike zone. Damned if it's not. Umped me twice in Schenectady, once in Tacoma, he's a big-shot American Leaguer now. But I watched him work two games on TV last season, and Kendall's zone is still a goddamn inverted pear!"
I smiled and began to contemplate the pear, but Papa was already ragging it into oblivion, and chalking up a small, thin oval in its place. "Now this little beauty," he said, "is a Wally MacCloud. Works the Nationals now, Wally does, but he still hasn't heard of the inside or outside corners. Likes a lot of action, MacCloud does. Lots of walks, hits and homers for the hitters. Early showers for the pitchers. A high-scoring game for the fans." He borrowed Everett's most derisive sneer and stabbed the little oval with it. "You hear a ton of talk about a pitcher's earned run average. But what about the ump's? They've got 'em too, you know, and the way they vary is a damned disgrace! Wally's ERA was up around 15.00 the year I knew him. That's 7.5 runs per team per game, Kade! I pitched six innings of what might've been shutout ball against him in Phoenix once, gave up six Wally-walks and five earned Wally-runs, and still won the game 14 to 9. Does that take the cake or what?
