Don Denkinger, the umpire who blew a call at first base in game six of the 1985 World Series, died on May 12, 2023.
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Here is Cardinals fan Will Leitch at The Washington Post:
The reason the Cardinals lost that Series was how they reacted to the call: Herzog blew his top; the Cardinals made an error on the next play; the entire team melted down; they were shut out 11-0 in Game 7. That’s why they lost; not because Denkinger missed the call. As a once-9-year-old Cardinals fan watching that game, it took me nearly 40 years to finally admit this aloud. (Please don’t tell my dad.) That stress test, of processing the unfairness of the world and being resilient and steadfast in response, is a test the Cardinals failed. This is one of the best lessons sports has for us.
And it’s one that robot umpires will eradicate. If, as is widely anticipated, Major League Baseball moves to an automated strike zone at some point in the coming years, Don Denkinger will be remembered as one of the last umpires we ever learned this from. Yelling “kill the umpire” has been a staple of baseball since Norman Rockwell was drawing pictures of umps and managers screaming at each other on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. But in an age of technology, we might do it: We might actually kill the umpire.
But again: Are we sure this is good? The umpire Ron Luciano once joked, “If they create a robot umpire that calls every strike exactly right, hitters will never let it survive. Whenever it makes a call against them, they will beat it to death with a bat.”
A world without Don Denkingers is an oddly sterile, and even amoral, future. Will having a robot to blame for our failures, rather than ourselves, make us better sports fans? Or worse ones? After all, if you’re going to be furious at something, is it really better if it’s a robot?
Read the entire piece here.