Sports
LI Baseballer Is First To Be Thrown From Game Over Robot Umpire
Watch Frank Viola become the first thrown from a game for arguing with a human umpire over the call a robotic one made.
Long Island's Frank Viola, a former Mets pitcher-turned-coach from East Meadow, made history this week as the first person to be thrown out of a baseball game after disagreeing with a call by a robotic umpire.
Viola is a former Major League Baseball pitcher who played for the Twins, the Mets, the Red Sox, the Reds and the Blue Jays. Today, he is the pitching coach for the High Point Rockers in the Atlantic League.
The Atlantic League — which includes the Long Island Ducks — was also the one chosen by the MLB to be the testing ground for its new TrackMan system, which uses artificial intelligence to call balls and strikes, according to the Washington Post. The system relays the information to human umpires behind the plate, who get to make the ultimate call.
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At a Rockers game on July 13, Viola disagreed with a call the TrackMan made, but the human umpire upheld it. And as you can see in the video above, things got heated. Techinically, he was thrown out of the game for arguing with the human umpire, not the robotic one.
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