Robot umpires have descended upon professional baseball.
The independent Atlantic League became the first American professional baseball league to use a computer to call balls and strikes at its All-Star Game on Wednesday night, Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press reports.
Plate umpire Brian deBrauwere wore an earpiece connected to an iPhone in his pocket that relayed the calls from a TrackMan computer system using Doppler radar.
"Until we can trust this system 100 percent, I still have to go back there with the intention of getting a pitch correct because if the system fails, it doesn't pick a pitch up. or if it registers a pitch that's a foot-and-a-half off the plate as a strike, I have to be prepared to correct that," deBrauwere said before the game.
MLB reportedly plans to test the Trackman software as part of a three-year partnership with the Atlantic League.
Baseball history has been made. The first pitch registered by the #TrackMan automated ball-strike system is a called strike in the #AtlanticLeague All-Star game. pic.twitter.com/o8oR6RxLnr
— Rob Rose (@RobRoseSports) July 10, 2019
