Frank Viola Became The First Person Ejected For Arguing Balls And Strikes Called By The Robot Umpires In The Atlantic League
That was one small ejection for man, one giant ejection for mankind. Bonus points for Viola getting run for an F-Bomb, which sabermetrics people will tell you has been the cause of more ejections than any word in baseball history.
For those that don’t know, Major League Baseball and the Atlantic League have teamed up to move robot umps into baseball to at least do a better job calling balls/strikes than humans and at most take away jobs in the not-so-distant future from living, breathing, hard-working Americans that require a paycheck and benefits.
NY Post- Umpires in the Atlantic League will wear an Apple AirPod in one ear, connected to an iPhone, which in turn is connected to the software program in the press box. The software only determines balls and strikes, transmitting the call to the umpire, who has the final say.
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Or maybe they just don’t want shit like this to happen anymore. I don’t know.
Someone was going to be the first person ejected for arguing with the robot umpire system and I’m happy that person was someone with the nickname Sweet Music.
Don’t get it twisted though. Frankie V didn’t unleash his Sweet Lip Music in support of his fellow man because he’s baseball’s John Connor or because he thought a clear Ball 4 should have been a strike. Viola was actually upset about Balls 1-3 that all nicked the robot umpire’s strike zone being called balls by the living umpire with blood flowing through his body.
Everyone knows the people pay to see Major League Umpires like Cowboy Joe West and Angel “The Devil” Hernandez make calls, regardless of if they are correct or not. So it’s nice to see that even though the machines have arrived, we still have that old baseball feeling of umpires blowing calls and managers blowing a gasket about it, preferably while dropping an F-Bomb or 5 along the way. I don’t think Frank Viola will be making it into Cooperstown for his career or his Hall of Fame 80s hair/mustache combo.
But maybe he’ll make it inside those hallowed walls for being a trailblazer for the sport as the first coach to ride an F-Bomb to an early shower because he told a human umpire to do his fucking job by letting a machine do it for him. And while they are at it, they should put this tweet in the Robot Umpire Hall of Fame that will likely be built over the current Baseball Hall of Fame once the machines rise up and take over the world.
Obligatory Wally Backman classic meltdown with roughly 8 billion F-Bombs: