Rage against the baseball machine
In a lifetime of attending perhaps a thousand professional baseball games, all but ten or so in the minor leagues — quondam site of the sport’s heart — I have finally encountered an umpire I would despise, disparage, spit upon, kick, and, yes, kill: ABS, colloquially known as “Robo-ump.” It happened in Rochester, New York, where the storied Red Wings took on the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. The game being played on the field was recognizably baseball, but there was something off about the experience, rather like when the niece meets the pod-person version of Uncle Ira in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
