Respect the Basebots

Nolan Ryan has recently expressed his problems with the current treatment of pitchers, from high school all the way to the majors. Managers telling pitchers what to throw and pulling them out of games strictly because of a pitch count are both traits of what he calls “robot baseball”. During a Cubs vs. Pirates broadcast last weekend Bob Brenly also acknowledged this when he said, “the game is not played by robots.” Not yet at least.

Gamers Ahead of the Game

Bob Brenly must have forgotten about Base Wars, a Nintendo game released in 1991 where baseball was played by robots. Set in the 24th century, Base Wars operates on the premise that managers have grown tired of player salaries and fans have grown tired of human competition, so replacing current players with robots was inevitable. Its good to know that in 300 years, we will have survived global warming to create the greatest achievement man could ever hope for: baseball-playing robots. If you didn’t want to save our planet before, you have to now.

Base Wars doesn’t just feature robots, it features cyborgs, flybots, tanks, and mycycles that fight in a tag out situations for the right to be safe on base. Since there are no force-outs in Base Wars, fighting is very common. Robots also lose power by getting hit by pitches and losing fights, if this power gets too low one more bean ball will destroy the robot by explosion leaving it’s team shorthanded. Best of all, if three robots on one team are blow to pieces that team is disqualified, making it possible to win a game by outfighting and beaning the opposing team regardless of what’s on the scoreboard.

Two years later, Super Nintendo released Super Baseball 2020 with the gained optimism that it would take just under 30 years to build baseball-playing robots, rather just over three centuries. Super Baseball 2020 also added the political correctness of humans and robots playing baseball alongside each other, often even teammates. Because when these basebots finally arrive in the Major Leagues, they won’t necessarily be any better than humans currently playing the game.

Visions to Reality

Dreams of robot baseball players didn’t stop in early 90s Nintendo games. In 2005 Frank Barnes of Robocross built “The Headless Batter”, seen in this video hitting baseballs out of high speed pitching machine.

Scientists at Tokyo University Developed a pair of robots, one a humanoid arm that can mimic the motion of a pitcher, the other a bat with a laser eye that can see the pitch and hit it to precise locations.

This Japanese Robot can actually nod the catcher’s decision, mimic the windup of a major league pitcher and follow through. He’s still working on his gyro ball.

Robocalypse Now

If Nolan Ryan cant handle metaphorical robot baseball, how will he feel when the game he loves is actually being played by robots? While Super Baseball 2020 suggests that humans and robots can achieve baseball unity, it could really just be the transition period until robot technology and artificial intelligence improves and robots take over baseball entirely in early-to-mid 2300s, in a much more violent version of the game wherein they are treated much like Roman Gladiators forced to battle to the death while humans cheer from the stands.

When robots take over baseball, it’s only a matter of time until they take over America and eventually the world. A robot Jackie Robinson may seem progressive, but a robot Barack Obama is something we might not be ready for, especially when Republicans find out he was programmed in Tokyo.

Its inevitable that over time the robot’s intelligence will grow and they will learn human emotions and realize that they are being sacrificed for our entertainment with no compensation. The baseball robots will become angry and aim to destroy the human race and the sports fans will be the first to go!

If we continue to pursue the ultimate American and Japanese dream of the baseball playing robot, we must prepare ourselves to accept them and appreciate them in a way that will not drive them to overthrow the human race and destroy the world. Respect the basebots. If we force them into our human sports, then we must also give them human rights and treat them as equals. Baseball is America’s pastime, but robot baseball is America’s future.

Is Anything Better than Perfect?

Dallas Braden’s shocking perfect game on Sunday was only the 19th in MLB history, a history that includes many players who’s images can only be seen as etchings on mountain rocks and who’s existence cannot be proven. The only other Athletics pitcher ever to throw a perfect game was Catfish Hunter in 1968.

The victim of perfection was even more surprising. The Tampa Bay Rays have the best record in baseball, and only the Yankees have scored more runs in the AL. The Rays are stacked with young talented hitters like Evan “my second favorite” Longoria, Carl Crawford, and BJ Upton, yet no matter what how many times those guys were brought up Braden continually credited veteran journeyman utility player, Gabe Kapler, as his toughest out. For those of you who don’t understand baseball terminology, veteran journeyman utility player is a nice way of saying old mediocre backup player.

Braden proved to have little-to-no respect for baseball’s superstars when he blew his lid on Alex Rodriguez on April 22 after A-Rod jotted through the pitchers mound on his way back to the dugout. Get the hell outta my office! Apparently this is an unwritten, and seldom heard of, rule in baseball. It seems like baseball has a lot of those… maybe they should start writing them down… A-Rod understandably took a minor shot at the unproven Braden, claiming he was looking for his “fifteen minutes of fame”.

While Braden will still never reach the celebrity actress-dating, record-breaking status that A-Rod has a achieved, he certainly etched his name in baseball’s everlasting history with a perfect game on mothers day, capped off with a hug from his teary-eyed grandmother who happened to be one of the very few Oakland A’s fans in attendance.

Flashback

July 23, 2009, White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle threw the 18th perfect game in MLB history against the very same Tampa Bay Rays. They weren’t quite as hot as they were coming into Sunday’s game against Braden, but the Rays record sat at a very respectable 52-43 and they were the defending American League Champions. How has this offensive powerhouse who has been one of the five best teams in baseball since the beginning of 2008 become a target for slow-throwing lefties to toss perfect games?

Old Man Pitcher

It’s hard to top perfection, but something similar happened over the weekend that was even more unprecedented. On Friday night, 47 year-old Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer stepped out of the fountain of youth, or maybe the hot tub time machine, and became the oldest player in MLB history to throw a complete game shutout, allowing only two hits and walking none, leading the Phils to a 7-0 victory over Atlanta.

Moyer is pushing 50, yet consistently fooling NL hitters with more junk than a Chinatown thrift store, but to throw a complete game shutout is just ridiculous. This will go down as one of the most underappreciated performances in sports history. I’m not trying to take away from Braden’s perfect game, but that happened 18 times before. If he can come back in twenty years and do the same thing with a two hit cushion, I’ll give him equal props.

Triple-Double… Supersized

There were several great performances this weekend that were upstaged by history-making pitchers. Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo made the Cavaliers look foolish on Sunday as Boston tied the series 2-2. Rondo finished with a monster triple-double (29 points, 18 rebounds, 13 assists), but even those numbers don’t do justice to the way he controlled every aspect of the game while making great plays like he was Shakespeare (get it?). The best of which came in the fourth quarter when Rondo froze LeBron James in mid-air while he salivated for one of his patented backboard bashing blocks only to be fooled with a flying pump fake and behind the back pass that deserves to be played with great NBA playoff highlights for years to come.

Bombs over Boston

Mark Teixeira officially broke out of his routine April slump by homering three times against the rival Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday. The gold glove first baseman became only the second player in Yankees history to hit three bombs against the hated Red Sox, joining the great Lou Gehrig (not bad company). Yankees fans will give Teixeira a pass for hitting .136 in April since he put all his cheese on one cracker on Sunday, embarrassing the Boston pitching staff from both sides of the plate and proving he is once again ready to turn things around in May.

Teixeira’s slump pattern is the oddest in a sport full of odd slump patterns. Like clockwork, Tex has hit .237 with 23 homers and 83 RBI throughout his career in April, all career lows. In any other month Teixeira’s career lows are .277, 40 home runs and 119 RBI. I wouldn’t expect this from a young switch-hitting, well-rounded player who keeps himself in good shape and I wouldn’t really care if he wasn’t on my fantasy team in keeper league! Next year he’s staying on my bench in April.

Iron Ticket

Iron Man 2 made a major bang this weekend, as expected, cashing in $133.6M in ticket sales. The most impressive part, other than the upgrades to his already badass flying robot suit, is the dominance Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and the rest of this locked and loaded cast has over the box office, blowing away A Nightmare on Elm Street ($9.1M), How to Train your Dragon 3D ($6.7M), and Date Night ($5.3M). Iron Man 2 competing against this list of B movies you probably haven’t heard of, and hopefully haven’t seen, seems like LeBron James jumping in a game of 21 at a YMCA in Des Moines, Iowa. But at least Hollywood is branching out: Super hero sequels, horror movie remakes, 3D animation and over-the-top romantic comedies are all things you just don’t see enough of these days…