Felger & Mazz: Mike Port Talks Technology Improving Baseball
Former Red Sox interim general manager and vice president of umpiring Mike Port joined Felger and Massarotti to discuss the state of umpiring in Major League Baseball.
Is it true that umpires can't see the last 5 feet of the pitch that approaches the batter, as Bobby Valentine recently claimed?
"Questionable. I don't very much buy into that," Port said.
Port introduced some very technical reasoning for believing umpires can see the strike zone just fine. So, is Bobby Valentine just whining about the umps?
"Yes. Precisely," Port said. "Bobby's a good baseball man and he knows the game well and he's a good manager, but I think we all at one time or another fall prey to looking for others. It's almost a societal thing -- who can we blame?"
Has Major League Baseball looked into using technology for accurate balls and strikes calls? Could a computer chip be put into the baseball?
"I think technology would allow that. The game can be really whatever we want it to be," Port said. "If we want it to be technological to the extent that it's different to what it's played at Little League and the rest of the way up, probably a lot of things are technologically possible. But is that what you want the game to be?"
