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Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

By Staff | Apr 19, 2023

To the editor:

Branch Rickey, manager of the Dodgers, signed Jackie Robinson on April 10, 1950; integrating Black athletes into the big leagues 73 years ago. When Don Drysdale pitched in game one of the 1965 World Series because Sandy Koufax refused to pitch on Yom Kippur, seven runs were given up in the first three innings, but the fans held their breath and hung in there. Baseball, the American pastime, has had a proud place in innovating tolerance and cultural workplace changes.

As robot technology invades the workplace, crashing cars in cities and downing planes from the sky, it should be no surprise that Artificial Intelligence will now call the game itself. A human official will still stand behind the plate this season, but is only allowed to parrot the robot generated call in her ear-jack from clever technology. Perhaps next year the performative job will be removed altogether, and the electronic scoreboard can simply declare the information on balls and strikes. It will be futile and unsatisfying to boo the scoreboard.

Public attendance at the games is down year over year this century, so the major leagues have added a clock to speed up the baseball workers and are replacing the umpires with robot technology. The fans’ short attention spans is credited as requiring this workplace speed up. Wages for players have dropped from 1990 average annual pay of baseball $597,537 to a post employer lock out in 2023 of a minimum annual wage of $563,500. Some kids still say they want to be, when they grow up a sports hero; but fewer than before. The glamour and allure of a high salary are available in other entertainment venues. A pastime that does not cultivate an interest from the community youth may lack a future.

Maybe the wresting of control away from players and making the workers more expendable and cheaper are not crowd- pleasing enticements the MLB public relations firm would have us believe. Perhaps the charm of the game was in something other than getting it done quickly, and the sanitized performance of a machine’s function. The poetry of a catch by Willie Mayes and his humanity in embracing an injured player from another team, might not be something that can be programed?

My guess is that the game, without the controversy of the human element, may be merely more brusk and efficient. I have a suspicion that what gave the game it’s grandeur in our culture may be missed in the ghosting by a machine.

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral