Maximal Americanness

**Ira Glass** (0:01)
A quick warning, there are curse words that are un-Beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a Beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

**Ira Glass** (0:11)
When he's in his twenties, it was years ago, Pablo Torre started appearing on TV, talking about sports. Talking about something that now, he's kind of embarrassed about.

**Pablo Torre** (0:21)
I was a gas bag on ESPN. Various people did not like me, I think. I just sort of represented this new young person who was vaguely Asian, but also Mexican. I'm Filipino.
That answers that mystery. But I had this take from the very beginning of my time on TV back in 2012, which was, we debate in sports all of the time.
How much did the refs blow this? What's the call have been? Who's the hero? Who's the villain? What's right and what's wrong? And I had been arguing forever that robots can solve this. Like we have the technology. If you replace the referee or the umpire with a robot, we don't need to waste our time arguing about this dumb shit.

**Ira Glass** (1:07)
And so that became your stance?

**Pablo Torre** (1:09)
It became a thing I was known for, was calling for this robot referee revolution. Like, the guy won't shut up about these robots.

**Ira Glass** (1:19)
He wins his now when he thinks about it.

**Pablo Torre** (1:21)
Anyhow, years go on, and then finally, in 2021, I see this story break that at long last, the most traditional sport in all of America, Major League Baseball, is experimenting with robot umpires in the minor leagues.

**Ira Glass** (1:39)
Minor League teams installed what they called the ABS system, the Automated Ball Strike System. These Hawkeye cameras with optical tracking, they looked out over home plate and saw perfectly whether every pitch was in the strike zone, and then told the human umpire who was standing there through an earpiece whether to call it a ball or a strike. And the way it worked in the early versions is that the robots made the call, and the human umpire just let the fans and players know what the robot said. Popple got what he always dreamed of, what he always pontificated about. There's no more need to argue about the umpire's calls, there's no more reason to boo the umpire from the stands.
And, Popple, watch those games.

**Pablo Torre** (2:22)
It wasn't as good. Really? It wasn't as good because so much of what going to a baseball game is like is you sitting in the stands and effectively using the airspace around you as this sort of pillow you can scream into, releasing whatever it is pent up over the course of your day, in your week, and frankly, your childhood.
And you're getting to unleash it on, and this is, I think, a really important part of this, on another person.

**Ira Glass** (2:56)
Popple says that watching the minor league games, knowing that the human empire was just the messenger for the robot empire and its perfect calls of balls and strikes.

**Pablo Torre** (3:05)
It felt like the equivalent of talking to a customer service rep that you know isn't a person.
It's like, I get that you're making human noises, but it's, it's eerie. And then realizing, oh no, no, I want, I want a human. Because when you're getting mad at an umpire in these minor league full ABS system games, you're just yelling at your computer monitor.

**Ira Glass** (3:38)
Then, this season, I'm guessing a lot of you have heard this, the robot umpires arrived in the major leagues. The ABS system went into every major league baseball park, and every game in those parks has used that technology. And the problem that Pabbel had with ABS when he first saw it in the minors, they fixed it. They fixed it completely and fully with a competence he had never expected from major league baseball.
How are they doing? So explain for people who aren't watching baseball, how the system works now.

**Pablo Torre** (4:08)
It's brilliant the way it works now and I didn't see it coming.
The way it works is that it's not a computer telling the umpire in their ear, this is a ball and this is a strike. What's happening instead is the umpire, the human being is going about their job as they have for decades upon decades.

**Ira Glass** (4:26)
So the umpire is calling the game the way they always have.

**Pablo Torre** (4:30)
Yes, except now there is a challenge system in which the batter, the pitcher, the catcher, they can basically throw a flag and say, in so many words, I think the umpire messed up.