An Aaron Miles Fixed-Verse Spectacular

want to touch the heinie

I supply my own pitchforks, and torches ;-)

There are two umpires on the field. Replays get referred to a third umpire who watches video replays to determine the true outcome and his decision is either radioed down to the on-field umpire or aired on the stadium’s video board.

It is used routinely for run-out and stumping calls. These are the equivalent of groundout situations in baseball.

It can also be used for contentious catches where the contention comes from whether or not the ball carries – the equivalent in baseball is a short flyball hit over the infield, where an OFer has to run in and either catches it cleanly or “traps” it with the ground in his glove. These are, in practice, quite difficult to rule on in cricket, and are usually given “not out”.

It is also used routinely for checking whether a ball has crossed the boundary rope. This is the equivalent to using it for checking if a HR is foul/fair, or above or below the line.

These two examples above are what bailorg describes. This has been used for about 10 years now, at least, and is available in most professional games.

However, in the last 2 years they have pioneered using it in some matches for ALL decisions, where the bowling team OR the batting team appeal against a decision (in conjunction with technologies like “hawkeye”, which shows where the trajectory of the ball would likely go after it hits a batsman and is reputedly very accurate, and “hotspot”, an infra-red camera which shows when a ball has tipped the edge of a bat by showing up, as the name suggests, as a hot spot on the bat, although I think this has only been used once or twice as the tech is expensive and not widely available. They also use video replay and super-slo-mo cameras).

This is a VERY major change as it essentially takes all decisions out of the umpire’s hands; they still make all the decisions, but, as the batting and fielding team each have three appeals or “referrals” to the video umpire, in practice, any contentious decision is referred, and it should more or less minimise mistakes. The rule is that the video ump can only overturn an obviously wrong decision, but, with the technology above I described, they probably get it right 99%+ of the time.

The equivalent in baseball would be unworkable, as it would have an umpire STILL calling balls and strikes, but the pitcher or hitter could query/refer any decision and the decision would either be looked at by pitchFX or some other tool to see if the pitch was a strike or not, or it would be referred to a TV umpire with an auto strike zone drawn (or some sort of technology). I think in baseball it would have to be more immediate, and you would have to basically have a robot calling balls/strikes.

The cricket version has, in my opinion, worked VERY well when it’s been used (one or two errors but mostly I think it’s improved decision making), however, there is/was some opposition to it. For instance, I am going to the match between England and Bangladesh tomorrow, in Manchester. The two captains of the teams decided NOT to use the referrals/3rd umpire procedure in this series, so it will not be implemented. Any bad decisions will therefore stand as per the on-field umpire. In practice, this is probably worse than baseball, as, in a typical test match, I’d say there will be at least 3 or 4 instances when a batsman is given “out” incorrectly, and probably many more close calls when they’re given the benefit of the doubt when in fact they should’ve been out (benefit of any doubt goes to the batting team). I think, in baseball, a few balls and strikes are missed but there probably isn’t the sheer number of close/difficult decisions that there is in cricket, due to the complexity of the rules on giving a batsman out, and the foibles of the umpires.

Sorry for the length of post. Basically I think the cricket system I described for ALL decisions would work for baseball on bang-bang calls and contentious catches, as well as fair/foul balls, BUT I do not think it is workable for ball/strikes calls. I think it should be implemented as I described above. I think it’s also quite similar to the thing when the football coaches throw their ickle yellow handkerchiefs on the field, but I know next to nothing about that game.

FWIW

but in my mind, there isn’t really a fair comparison between the two. Five Guys is a low end “gourmet burger” place; In n Out is a drive-thru. The burgers are different because they’re geared towards different purposes. In n Out is way faster than Five Guys.

That said, I like In n Out’s burgers better than Five Guys, but Five Guys’ fries are the bomb.

Eh, we’ll always disagree one some things, and you know what? I’m okay with that.

:=8/

I love Steak n Shake’s shakes, but not their burgers…that’s like the only place where a triple cheeseburger is all that’ll fill me up and is also the only place where that burger will be 8 bucks.*

*price is a guesstimate.

real horrowshow in your guttywuts!

And I wanted to stop at the In ‘N Out Burger but my ever-loving fiancee talked me out of it because she said “they have nothing for vegetarians” (which I am). Burgerville’s Southwest Black Bean burger is the greatest veggie fast food ever invented.

he said to deal with him and leave his family out of it. That’s where it gets ugly unnecessarily. Leave the guy’s wife and kids alone, people.