Terminator 3 is a very underrated Terminator movie. Nick Stahl and Claire Danes are fresh and endearing actors, and Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t too old. T3 didn’t have enough box office punch to launch Kristanna Loken to stardom, but the movie definitely had its strong moments. One scene in particular stands out: Base Commander Robert Brewster (played by forever-typecast-as-a-military-guy David Andrews) hesitates before reluctantly granting the AI known as SkyNet access to the nation’s arsenal.

We know what happens next. SkyNet emotionlessly takes over and launches nuclear weapons to expunge the Earth of the human race. The lesson of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is that it is a grave mistake to surrender human control to the machines – a lesson the Lords of Baseball have all but ignored.

On May 4, the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee approved the SEC’s request to implement a challenge system for balls and strikes for each game of this year’s conference tournament. The MLB is already doing this. College baseball teams will be afforded the right to challenge a called ball or strike and have it evaluated by an automated ball tracking system. Each team will be given three challenges.

“We have to get it right” is the mantra of those in support of this inhuman system. No set of teeth is more greatly gnashed than the abused canines of fans who endlessly groan about the quality of umpiring. Every defeat is the result of a questionable call. It’s a fan’s right to gripe, but blaming a loss on a bad call is a loser’s game. It’s the ultimate, unprovable “What if?” that keeps some fans awake at night.

Has anyone considered that the human shortcomings of umpiring is baked into the game’s charm? An important task of pitching and batting is understanding the umpire’s unique strike zone and working with the clay given. Batters, pitchers, managers all have the right to make their arguments – which can be entertaining. The crowd can even influence an umpire’s work by voicing displeasure. Why rob ourselves of one of the few things fans have the power to affect?

We keep trying to forcibly conform baseball into a generic off-the-rack experience. In the late 1960s, we decided that what baseball really needed was perfection. After all, it just wasn’t fair that a home run hit in Boston was a pop out in San Francisco. New stadiums were built in identical circular shapes, and playing fields adopted identical dimensions. By design, a home run clobbered in Pittsburgh or St. Louis was equal to one crushed in Philadelphia or Atlanta. The playing field was literally evened. And man was it boring. It wasn’t until the construction of Camden Yards in Baltimore before baseball reclaimed its idiosyncratic soul.

You know what’s another human weakness? Making the same dumb mistakes. Instead of a cookie-cutter stadiums, we’re demanding a cookie-cutter strike zone – arbitrated by an algorithm whose only deities are ones and zeros. Forget booing a called strike, fans. Who are you booing at? A robot? You may as well boo a toaster.

Of course, adjudicating balls and strikes is just the first step to removing human umpires entirely. After all, if AI can determine the strike zone, it can also determine whether or not a runner is caught stealing or if a pitcher commits a balk. Hooray for perfection! Perhaps we should strip human element from baseball – program machines to throw perfect pitches, and engineer robots to play shortstop. After all, errors are just as aggravating as blown calls, am I right? Why allow our day to be ruined by a right fielder losing the ball in the sun?

I’m sure the people who invented SkyNet had only the best intentions at heart. After all, when it comes to the fate of mankind, “We have to get it right.”

IMAGE is IRONICALLY, a CREATION of AI