Bobby Cox, the legendary — and argumentative — baseball manager, was ejected from a record 162 major league games during tenures in the 1970s and ’80s with the Atlanta Braves and Toronto Blue Jays. That’s an entire season’s worth of epic meltdowns from his battles with umpires over blown calls, real and perceived.
Today’s managers aren’t close to his record; former Red Sox skipper Terry Francona, now with the Cincinnati Reds, is the active leader, with 53 ejections. That’s because there’s been very little to argue about since 2014, when the league introduced instant replay, allowing managers to challenge most calls on the field.
And now, the last battlefront — the strike zone — appears to be closing. This season, Major League Baseball is debuting the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System, which uses a network of cameras to track each pitch and determine if it is a ball or a strike. And while umpires will still make the call themselves, players will be able to challenge. During the first 10 days of spring training, teams won 51.3 percent of their challenges.
I’m all for accuracy and fairness. But as officiating in professional sports becomes increasingly automated, I’m not sure it’s worth what is being lost.
I, for one, will miss watching a manager or player get their money’s worth after an ejection. Lou Piniella — who managed five major league teams — had the best histrionics: tossing his poor hat all over the place, kicking dirt onto the umpires’ shoes, and throwing bases into the outfield. Oscar-worthy stuff.
Of course, it’s no fun when your team is on the wrong end of a questionable call.
Longtime Patriots fans will remember the 1976 divisional playoff game between the Oakland Raiders and a Cinderella New England team. With the Pats on the cusp of a stunning win, a highly controversial roughing the passer penalty against Ray “Sugar Bear” Hamilton gave the Raiders a lifeline on their way to a Super Bowl title.
Another time, a great Raiders pass rush resulted in a strip sack — err, I mean incomplete pass — giving Tom Brady and another Cinderella Pats team a chance for a comeback victory of their own on the road to a Super Bowl championship in 2001.
Sometimes it goes your way, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Our hometown biases can also color how we feel about tirades by players and coaches. I loved watching David Ortiz balk at a bad call, fighting his case with the home plate umpire for better treatment during the next at bat. But watching Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic complain incessantly during the entire 2024 NBA Finals against the Celtics drove me crazy. Fortunately, all that yapping didn’t get him very far; the C’s disposed of the Mavs in five games.
And isn’t the viewing experience elevated by controversial calls and indignant tirades? Before you roll your eyes, I’ll say it again: Bad calls can be utterly infuriating. I’m yelling at the TV, cursing out referees as much as the next rabid Boston fan. But that’s part of the fun. Because to feel wronged, to feel anything at all, is better than to feel nothing.
One of the greatest ills to befall sports in recent years has been the misconception that the ultimate goal of professional sports is to become the leanest, meanest, most efficient winning-machine possible. This efficiency often comes at the expense of a sport’s very heart and soul.
Is it really fun to watch some NBA teams hoist up 50 three-pointers a game? Or to watch a parade of flame-throwing pitchers induce either a strikeout, walk, or home run? While modern analytics might back these strategies, they aren’t as compelling to watch as, say, a powerful drive to the hoop for an acrobatic dunk. And this same quest for efficiency is taking place with officiating.
Take tennis, for instance: Most of the Grand Slams are now called by a camera-tracking system.
But it means the nattily dressed line judges have been replaced with some phantom voice calling faults, sounding like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Plus, players used to have to deal with the inevitable blown call every now and then. And while outbursts a la John McEnroe (“You cannot be serious!”) were entertaining, the greats had to find a way to rise above it.
In football, the NFL did away with the chain gang to measure first downs last season, replaced — once again — by cameras. This deprives us of those tense moments when the referees stretch the chain tight, fans waiting with bated breath for the call.
Now we’ve eliminated them to save a few minutes over the course of a three-hour game. Seems like a bad deal to me.
Erasing the imperfections makes sports less natural, and less like the rest of the world around us. Things don’t always work out the way they should, and part of living a healthy existence is accepting this truth.
When Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was robbed of a perfect game in 2010 by a terrible call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce, he had every right to be furious. Instead, he handled it with grace.
“Nobody’s perfect,” he told reporters, referring to Joyce’s call.
That might not always be easy to stomach, but that’s life. And that should be sports, too.
Jamie McClellan is a sports and culture writer from Belmont. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.