The pitcher and catcher are in constant communication so that the catcher knows where to put his glove, otherwise he very well might miss catching the pitch.
And hitting a ball is very difficult. It’s coming so fast you have to guess where it’s going to end up pretty early on and start swinging before it gets to the plate. You’re watching the pitcher more than the ball.
Hitting or catching a pitch is a matter of anticipation; you CAN’T see it in the last split second. You can’t track it, anyway.
The fact is that batters and catchers often fail to hit and catch the ball, and umps often fail to make the right call. There is no evidence at all that it is possible for human beings to consistently get fewer than 7 percent of ball and strike calls wrong (and that includes preposterously easy calls, like balls thrown over the batter’s head.) 93 percent accuracy is about the best any ump can do, and only when they’re young; essentially all the best MLB umps at calling pitches are the youngest ones, too. Humans will never get any better at this.
Wow, great responses. I think this is the best Game Room thread I’ve ever had. 
Okay, I looked over that clip over the pass interference noncall, the one that had Seahawks fans up in arms. I saw two big guys pushing against each other, a bunch of hand motions, and one of them falling down. I…sheesh. If there was a missed penalty, I certainly couldn’t prove it. I’m pretty sure this was a case of both players doing enough that the official could not definitively pin PI on one or the other.
russian heel - I remember an ESPN.com writer…might have been Bill Simmons; it was a long time ago…being disgusted with Donaghy because he was a glory hound and didn’t say anything anyone who’d been paying attention to the league didn’t already know. Make of it what you will.
Good point about having to keep things moving, and I’d like to pose to you a related question: Would it be better if we got rid of replay and challenges altogether? It frankly astounds me that, after taking such massive, drastic, sweeping steps to have better officiating and a level playing field, I inevitably hear about a new horrifically egregious miscall or miscarriage of justice every week. This is insane, especially given the number of games the NFL has compared to other sports. Sure NBA fans might grumble about bias toward the Lakers or the Knicks getting jobbed in the draft lottery, but you won’t find thirty YouTube videos of flagrant fouls that weren’t called in the '18-'19 season. The NFL keeps trying and trying to become “accurate”, and it just isn’t happening. Why not accept that reality?
Wow, great responses. I think this is the best Game Room thread I’ve ever had.
Okay, I looked over that clip over the pass interference noncall, the one that had Seahawks fans up in arms. I saw two big guys pushing against each other, a bunch of hand motions, and one of them falling down. I…sheesh. If there was a missed penalty, I certainly couldn’t prove it. I’m pretty sure this was a case of both players doing enough that the official could not definitively pin PI on one or the other.
russian heel - I remember an ESPN.com writer…might have been Bill Simmons; it was a long time ago…being disgusted with Donaghy because he was a glory hound and didn’t say anything anyone who’d been paying attention to the league didn’t already know. Make of it what you will.
Good point about having to keep things moving, and I’d like to pose to you a related question: Would it be better if we got rid of replay and challenges altogether? It frankly astounds me that, after taking such massive, drastic, sweeping steps to have better officiating and a level playing field, I inevitably hear about a new horrifically egregious miscall or miscarriage of justice every week. This is insane, especially given the number of games the NFL has compared to other sports. Sure NBA fans might grumble about bias toward the Lakers or the Knicks getting jobbed in the draft lottery, but you won’t find thirty YouTube videos of flagrant fouls that weren’t called in the '18-'19 season. The NFL keeps trying and trying to become “accurate”, and it just isn’t happening. Why not accept that reality?
NFL could make all new refs full time while letting the existing guys stay part time if they want until they retire.
College BB has no limit on the number of games a ref can work in a week. They are not full time and get paid per game. Some of them work 4 games a week which is too much but the NCAA does not care.
It almost appears that NFL fans enjoy the litigation of so many plays, or at least that getting it “right” in a game of inches is worth the interruption and additional down time. Personally, it’s one of the things (only one of!) that drove me away from the sport.
The statements that “everyone knows holding could be called on every play” and “they need to let them play” I think illustrate that the game as currently played is impossible to officiate 100% correctly (and that no one really wants it to be).
Don’t know what the fix is - but the first thing I’d do is make all replay decisions happen at full speed - if the human eye/brain can’t tell if the ball hit the ground (and similarly in baseball that the runner lost contact with the base) then it didn’t happen. And I’d write it into the TV contracts that slow-motion replays of calls can’t be broadcast during the game. People can do frame-by-frame analysis post-game, but it doesn’t need to happen real-time.
I lean towards thinking that replay has led to poorer officiating - the on-field guys know that they are being watched/back-stopped by replay so their calls aren’t as critical to the game, and hence they are getting worse?
It’s funny to say the NFL is the worse, when watching even one NBA game will prove that is not true.
You don’t need to trust a disgraced former ref, you can just look and see the crappy, inconsistent job. Whether or not you personally believe it is deliberate, there’s no denying the star players get calls their way. Everybody knows it. The announcers even point it out. Anybody that doesn’t know it probably thinks pro rasslin’ is a real contest. 
And when MLB goes to robo umps (and fires Angel Hernandez!) the game will be better.
college FB has way too many replays, there is no limit. They should give the coaches challenges like the NFL.
Most of the complaints that I have heard was that they didn’t even review the play. The NFL changed the rules to make PI calls and non-calls reviewable. Then in a key moment of an important game they don’t even bother to review it. It’s an example of a bad rule that needs to be scrapped.
In all of North American sports, football is arguably the most complex to officiate. You have 22 players on the field at any given time, which is more than you see in baseball, basketball or hockey. You have them all colliding with or running near or into each other at most times. The NFL rulebook is a yard thick. It’s the most violent of the 4 major sports.
Yeah, that one suprised me, too. Even if it would have wound up not being called, the league has come across as capricious (at best) in when they have been choosing to (or not to) review those sorts of plays. Either find a way to be consistent in when you’re going to review those plays, or scrap it.
They did look at it. They just didn’t stop play. It was obvious that Hollister didn’t do enough to warrant an OPI call.
As a one-time player, and a long-time watcher, I’ve always wondered if some sort of ball-positioning system might be helpful. Some sort of thing that could locate the ball in a 2-d plane, with a sort of “clicker” to indicate the end of the down, or automatic indication of touchdowns.
So rather than mess with antiquated chains, the refs would just click this thing at the end of the play when the player is down/out of bounds, and it would return the exact yard line that the ball was at when the clicker was clicked.
I can’t help but think the technology to do this wouldn’t be too obtrusive or difficult.
Replay actually does more good than bad. The problem fans have is that the video needs to be conclusive for the call to be overturned. It’s the fans of the team that the final decision does not favor who then bitch that replay doesn’t work.
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Interesting that baseball adds 2 extra umps down the foul lines for the playoffs. Don’t know of any other sport that adds refs/umps.
The ridiculous part is that even if you have a timeout you can’t ask for a review in the last 2 minutes. Why?
More plays are given official review in the final 2 minutes because at that close to the end of the game each play is more likely to affect the game’s outcome. To counter that, they disallow coach challenges because the game is already going to be subject to extra delays.