John Henry Said to His Captain...

The Umpires' union is upset because the company that MLB has commissioned to create its electronic umpire evaluation system, QuesTec Inc., has been found guilty of fraud. Its former president has been barred in two countries (permanently from the American stock exchange and for 8 years by the Canucks), and it was fined for doing his dirty work.

Sandy Alderson, who has gone from a bright spot in the Commissioner's office to almost non-existent, does not see this as a problem. The umps disagree: "It is time to throw out the Commissioner's gimmick! Baseball is a game between men, not a game of man against the machine. " (Wouldn't it be cool if it were though?) They complain that the evaluation of the product is biased since non-baseball people are conducting it.

Of course, MLB has no problem with ties to corrupt companies-baseball execs themselves have been shown to be not too squeaky clean themselves (remember the Bud Selig-Carl Pohlad "loan"). Maybe the umps' union can win in this thumb-wrestling battle with MLB, but given how the players' union capitulated on the CBA last month and the weakened state of the union since Richie Phillips' Jim Jones impersonation, I am not sanguine. In other words, don't bet on it. I've written on why the system won't work at length before, but given the desire of the men in charge to get it done, much like the recommendations of the hand-picked, so-called Blue Ribbon Panel, it shall be done on earth as it is in the Commissioner's office.