Uhh, there’s already a robo-broadcaster in Bob Lorenz…so I’d watch what I wish for, Brenly.

“I’m telling you,” Brenly said on the air, “you get into extra innings, you get into the late innings of a close ballgame, you don’t want the umpire to determine who wins a ballgame.”

Brenly is a former major-league player and manager, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he’s ready for change in the way the game is officiated. He’s ready for new technology to step in. He’s ready ...

Major League Baseball appears set for a vast expansion of video review by umpires in 2014 and is examining whether all calls other than balls or strikes should be subject to instant replay.

Replay has been in place for home run calls since August 2008. Commissioner Bud Selig initially wanted to add trap plays and fair/foul calls down the lines for 2013, but change was put off while more radical options were examined.

‘‘My opinion has evolved,’’ baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday ...

That is why two items should be changed immediately. Neither will improve, say, replay judgment. Again, replay helps, but no system is ever going to be perfect. This is about providing a greater sense of umpire accountability, a greater belief that the umpires are being held to high standards:

1. Umpires involved in on-field issues should be available to the media after games, like any other on-field personnel. It was not long ago that was the general rule. Now, at best, a pool reporter is ...

Umpire Fieldin Culbreth, the crew chief in Thursday night’s game between the Angels and Astros at Minute Maid Park in Houston, has received a two-game suspension and a fine for the misapplication of Rule 3.05(b) in the top of the seventh inning, Major League Baseball announced Friday afternoon.

The other members of Culbreth’s crew—Brian O’Nora, Bill Welke and Adrian Johnson—received fines stemming from the same sequence of events. Culbreth’s two-game suspension will be served at a date to be ...

[Angels’] Manager Mike Scoscia argued Astros skipper Bo Porter wasn’t allowed to make two pitching changes before the first reliever fired an official pitch.

However, since the Angels came back to win, 6-5, the protest is essentially a non-factor. [...] Rule 3.05(b) states: If the pitcher is replaced, the substitute pitcher shall pitch to the batter then at-bat, or any substitute batter, until such batter is put out or reaches first base, or until the offensive team is put out, unless the ...

A’s infielder Adam Rosales hit a heroic game-tying solo home run in the top of the ninth inning Wednesday against Indians closer Chris Perez, stunning the crowd at Cleveland’s Progressive Field and injecting new life into an Oakland club that has hit a few road bumps since the calendar flipped to May.

Except Angel Hernandez and his umpiring crew blew the call … twice.

The latest Rohrshach test the swiftly emerging Umps Behaving Badly narrative:

Bryce Harper was ejected in the first inning of the Nationals’ 6-2 victory over the Pirates Sunday afternoon after he drew the ire of umpiring crew chief John Hirschbeck with his reaction to a check-swing third strike. The incident left the Nationals without their best player and, owing to behavior from Hirschbeck that Manager Davey Johnson deemed overaggressive, raised the issue of contentious relations between ...

There was a time when a younger CC Sabathia was a frequent visitor to the Indians manager’s office where he was told he couldn’t win the fight with umpires and to stop showing his displeasure with them while on the mound.

Those days have been gone for a while, but last night at Yankee Stadium a fill-in umpire mistook the Yankees’ ace yelling at himself for Sabathia screaming at him and let Sabathia know about it.

“I can’t be yelled at, I am a grown man,’’ Sabathia said after ...

Major League Baseball has fined umpire Tom Hallion and Tampa Bay Rays pitchers David Price, Jeremy Hellickson and Matt Moore for their involvement in an incident during this past Sunday’s game against the Chicago White Sox, sources familiar with the situation told ESPN.com.

Price, Hellickson and Moore each have been fined $1,000, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The financial details of Hallion’s fine is unclear.

The ball is a little bigger than a softball (and it beeps). The blind players must all wear blindfolds, both at bat and in the field, lest those who are legally blind by Social Security Administration standards, but can still distinguish light, have an advantage over the completely blind. They play on a baseball field, but there are only two bases: first and third, positioned slightly in foul territory so that blind runners don’t collide with blind fielders, and they aren’t actually bases, ...

Pittsburgh Press, February 15, 1913:

American league players and fans will have no kick coming in regard to decisions by umpires on balls and strikes if a machine to be submitted to President Ban Johnson does all that is claimed for it. The device…is guaranteed to enable an arbiter to tell exactly whether the pitcher has delivered a ball or a strike.
...
Johnson immediately replied to [the inventor], telling him that he was deeply interested in the device and asking him to explain it minutely.

This is fantastic, GIFs and videos of some great ejections and lip-read transcriptions of the conversations:

Joe Maddon: He tagged him on his ball sack! His ####### ass is on the bag!

AND

After being ejected by Joe West for arguing balls and strikes from the dugout, Girardi speaks for all major-league managers when he says:
Joe Girardi: It’s embarrassing, Joe. Horseshit! Hey, Joe, don’t laugh! You’re not better than this stuff. You think you are, but you’re not! You’re a bastard!

Bob Davidson thought he had made the correct call. In his mind, it wasn’t even debatable.

Nevertheless, after the umpire declared a runner safe on a swipe of second base during a contest at Dodger Stadium in 1984, Los Angeles skipper Tommy Lasorda stormed out of the dugout.

Davidson, then in just his third big league season, prepared for the worst. He got something different.

“All he talked about was an Italian restaurant he ate at and how the wine was bad,” Davidson said. “He said, ...

Verducci effects change.