GorT’s recent post elicited some interesting responses. First BG writes in regarding flopping and various sports:

So basketball and football are better than soccer because the NBA and the NFL are taking steps to deal with the curse of “flopping,” while soccer permits it to go on, interrupting the flow of the game.

Big deal. All that does is demonstrate yet another reason baseball is the greatest sport.

Well, not exactly my point – I wasn’t arguing that one sport was better than the other. And no, baseball is not the greateest sport…but I’ll get to that shortly.

Tom Boswell, one of baseball’s best writers, wrote, more than 25 years ago, Baseball has no penalties at all. A home run is a home run. You cheer. In football, on a score, you look for flags. If there’s one, who’s it on? When can we cheer? Football acts can all be repealed. Baseball acts stand forever.*

In football, basketball, and soccer, the primary function of the officials on the field or the court is to determine whether or not what just happened was legal, and then to punish the malefactors as they see fit. The result is howls of outrage from the fans of one team or the other, and, every so often, howls of outrage from EVERYONE when the officials make a ruling that is demonstrably idiotic.

Baseball has no such flaw. With very rare exceptions, the umpires simply rule what happened, not whether or not it was legal. Safe or out? Ball or a strike? Did the throw to first beat the runner or not? Did the catcher make the tag on the runner before he slid home?

And on those occasions that the umps decide someone did something illegal, the call is made instantly, such as when the Cardinals won game 3 of this season’s World Series on an obstruction call. They don’t throw a flag or blow a whistle and stop play while they huddle to decide whether the play was legal or not. The most frequent umpire huddle is to review a home run call – and that is simply to make sure they get the call right, not to decide whether it was hit legally or not.

In football, new rules that the fans don’t comprehend are instituted every season. Some illegalities are overlooked while others are penalized, and what’s happening on the field is so fluid, so complex, that no one can follow it all. Sometimes you even get the sense they’re just making it all up as they go along, the tipoff being when you hear an announcer explain a penalty by citing some arcane new rule you didn’t even know existed. And, as Boswell notes, football acts can all be repealed.

Sounds a lot like Obamacare to me.

You want to deal with flopping? Here’s how: Meanwhile, it’s only 73 days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

— Bernie Gilbert

I love the idea of Mr. T telling soccer floppers to get some nuts and as I stated it is a tragic flaw in soccer. Let me put two more digs into baseball.  First, if baseball is such a cut and dry sport why has MLB provided the means for managers to challenge up to three plays per game using instant replay?  I thought done was done?  Baseball acts stand forever?  Well, at least until Don Mattingly or Joe Girardi tosses his red bean bag onto the diamond from the dugout.  Second, baseball is a slow sport – just do some reading and you’ll find ample evidence of that.  Compound it by the majority of action takes place over the 18.44 meters between the pitcher’s mound and home plate between 3 players (pitcher, catcher and batter) while 15 other guys stand around on the field.  Baseball has a rule that the pitcher must pitch the ball within 12 seconds of having the ball – how many times have you seen a MLB umpire call an automatic ball for pitcher delay?  That’s the rule.  Look at the pitcher pace numbers and while it doesn’t map fully to the 12 second rule, it should give you a sense of the pace: he second fastest pitcher pace is 18.1 seconds (Buehrle) and Houston’s Bud Norris clocks in at 25.7 seconds.  The average is 21.5 seconds.  Almost double the rule.  Baseball can’t even follow its own rules and has started using fines to dissuade slow pace.  How about enforcing the rule in the game?  According to BG, if “someone did something illegal, the call is made instantly.”

No offense, BG, but you’ll get no love of baseball from this tin can especially the MLB.

In an attempt to reach the 7.62 meter mark for the Czar’s posts, I present the digital submission from Operative SMR:

To the Magnificent & Metallic GorTechie:

I also am an engineer.  When I took my EIT and PE exams, it was optional to take them in either Imperial or metric units.  I elected to take them in metric because 85% of the time, I got any question dealing with gravity and force wrong by a factor of 32.2.  One would suppose, viewed through the lens of probability, that I would only get it wrong 50% of the time, but through some perverse Imperial twist, it was more.

That said, I find I cannot think in metric.  Oh, for an immense cybernetic brain!

Faithfully yours,
Operative SMR

Well, hopefully you weren’t multiplying by 9/5ths and adding 32 when working with gravity.  Although I prefer Kelvin.

I’m sure I probably stirred a hornet’s net regarding baseball and maybe I’ll get a few more submissions regarding the metric system.  Keep the coming as I’m just waiting my turn for the Castle XBox as ‘Puter is tying it up playing FIFA ’14.

* Baseball acts stand but with asterisks given the whole steroid issue.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.