On the Purpose of Rules

I am not a huge fan of instant replay in professional sports. There certainly are some instances in which it is helpful and right: the infamous case of Jim Joyce's missed call at first base to break up a perfect game comes to mind, for example.

Joyce was looking right at the play before he called the runner safe, negating the 27th out of a perfect game (nydailynews.com)

Most of the time, though, the calls that people want to check (and by "people," I mostly mean TV and radio commentators) don't really need to be checked.

Here's what I mean by "need." The point of the out/safe rule, for example, is that runners need to get to the base before the defense tags them or the base they are forced to go to.* This is the fundamental principle of the game, and so needs to be enforced as exactly as possible. But he question of ties is really interesting. The rule book says, in the case of a batter-runner going to first base, that the throw must be there before the runner, suggesting that ties go to the runner. In all other force plays, the rule reads that the runner must beat the throw, suggesting the opposite. This ambiguity is germane because it indicates that the rules-makers had a general idea in mind. Not only that, but it is a reflection of the fact that plays as close as a "tie" will be judged more-or-less arbitrarily, and such is life. The game moves on.

The same idea applies to the strike zone. The purpose of the strike zone is to make the game fair and to keep it moving along. Batters can't just stand there forever waiting for the perfect pitch to hit, and pitchers can't throw things just anywhere. This rule was put in place after the first iteration of the game had batters requesting certain locations for pitches, thereby eliminating the pitcher/batter conflict that is so central to the game's excitement.  To some extent, the strike zone is a matter of interpretation by the umpire, even at the major league level. What exactly is the "midpoint" of a batter's body as he is moving and shifting to hit the ball? There are limits beyond which a fair strike zone can't move, but to think that it is precisely measurable within an inch or so is a bit silly.

Note that the top of the strike zone is not "at the letters," though the practical effect is almost that high. Note also that the bottom is not "at the knee." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_zone)

At lower levels of the game, this type of interpretation is even more important. Baseball is not fun to play or watch when no one swings the bat and every at-bat takes five pitches resulting in a walk. For the game to work, people must swing. One job of the umpire, therefore, is balance fairness with the good of the game. Call too big a strike zone and hitters have no real chance; call too few strikes and the game comes to a halt. 

All the griping about umps and strikes, then, needs to be based o these principles, not the fantasy that there should be the perfect zone.