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Professional baseball season has arrived. This year, Korean professional baseball introduced an Automatic Ball-Strike·ABS system called a robot umpire, making it more interesting. So far, the accuracy of ABS is 99.9%, showing a fast and stable atmosphere. It is said that bad weather and haze are almost the only causes of errors. If it can operate smoothly during the rainy season and hot weather in midsummer, ABS will become a very meaningful element of our baseball infrastructure. KBO commented positively: “Because of the consistent judgment of ABS, players and fans can completely focus on the game.”
However, it is said that Major League Baseball (MLB), which researched robot trials earlier than South Korea, has not yet made a decision on the introduction of ABS. Although ABS is being used to reduce the shortage of umpires in the minor leagues, it is very cautious about expanding to the MLB. Some people cited the cultural differences between our country and the United States, showing different understandings and attitudes towards the authority and impartiality of referees. We have accumulated various historical and social experiences that have forced us to be sensitive to injustice. On the contrary, in the process of establishing democracy and liberalism in the British and American cultural circles, we have complied with authority and rules.
In this context, I think of Greg Madders, the outstanding pitcher who dominated MLB in the 1990s and early 2000s and won 350 games. He ranks among the best with his great hand game against batsmen and his ability with the ball.
However, there have been several controversies over lenient calls from referees who suspected his ball-handling abilities were actually biased. After he came on the field, for some reason the umpires’ strike zone became wider and was even called the “Maddox Zone.” However, American baseball fans have no objection to the fact that Maddox is the best pitcher. Even if Mads-John is true, if the difference is at most one ball, hitters will have to adapt. This view is in sharp contrast to the understanding that only by applying the same standards to everyone as strictly as we do can it be “like sports”. In the United States, where liberalism and individualism are more widespread than in South Korea, the fact that public power is stronger than in South Korea may seem contradictory on the surface. However, after the Freud incident in 2021, despite the continuous side effects of public power, American citizens still Default, from which their philosophy on authority and rules can be seen.
It is not just baseball that is pursuing change by introducing new technologies and systems such as ABS. In football’s offside and goal determinations, from the use of VAR to many sports such as volleyball and tennis, a variety of infrastructure and systems have been introduced to improve the perception of human referees. The British Premier League opposes the introduction of VAR on the grounds of football pride. Misjudgments are part of the game, that is the virtue and essence of football.
However, in the end, the general trend will inevitably develop in the direction of “good things call for good things”. Among them, the recent keyword artificial intelligence (AI) also plays a big role. This change in trends and differences is not limited to sports, nor can it be seen as just cultural differences. In fact, the important and meaningful difference is not the gap in attitude and understanding of new things, but the difference in power to accept institutional changes and accept and adapt to new technologies according to the requirements of the times. The era when this invisible soft power becomes the basis of national competitiveness seems to have arrived. Our society and politics have a lot to learn from sport.
[庆熙大学经营学院教授 金道勋]
2024-04-10 12:49:27
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