“One day when I came in, this was back in 2383, my class of ten-year-olds was debating a play in a baseball game between the Brooklyn Cyclones and the New York Yankees. The auto-ump had called the Brooklyn runner out on second, when replays clearly showed that the player, I forget his name, was safe. Much of the class—Yankees fans, I suppose—were complaining that the auto-ump called the play and that was that, end of argument. A fair few of the rest were saying that if the auto-ump couldn't call a play correctly we should all just go right back to human umpires, as some leagues still used. I let them argue because I didn't have enough coffee to really face them all that morning. The argument devolved into whether one should rely on machines to make “important” decisions, or whether a human (I corrected them here, whether a living) being should oversee these decisions, something most pro leagues had phased out long ago.
“When someone threw a spitball at someone else I decided this had gone on long enough and I called the class to as much order as could be expected. I said, 'I have a way we can test this and see which side is right,' and some of them were skeptical and some were eager to try it, so I explained, making up a lot of it as I did so.
“I said to them, 'We will have a class baseball game. There will be two teams. The Green Team will be those of you who think an auto-ump is enough. The Purple Team can be people who think there should be living umpires. Okay?'
“They all murmurred and after a while assented.
“I went on, 'And there will be four umpires; two from the the Greens and two from the Purples—' I was interrupted there by this kid Tumbarello, frantically waving her left hand in the air and yelling, 'Me! Me! Me!'”
“I said, 'Oh, Tumbarello-chan, why you?'”
“Now this kid was one of these, 'I'm the Big Sister! Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead' kind of kids who was never afraid to be the first kid to hand in a finished test even if she knew she'd flunked it. So I was expecting one of her carefully crafted excuses that tyrannical Big Sisters are known for. But what she said was, 'My Uncle Angelo was an umpire in the Empire League. He taught me how to make calls, so I know how to do it RIGHT!'”
”'Oh yeah you do!' said this other kid, Mayell-chan, who was an only child and acted the part. Absolute stickler for the rules, for him and everyone he could bully into following them. 'Show us if you're so smart!'”
“Tumbarello-chan walked to the front of the class and said, 'Here's what you do. On a base, you watch the base, to see who's touching it, but you listen for the sound of the ball hitting the glove.' She demonstrated by punching her fist into her open hand. 'So! If nobody is touching the base when you hear that sound, OR, only the runner is touching the base, the runner is safe, right? And if only the baseman is touching the base when you hear that sound—'
”'What about if the baseman tags the runner and nobody is on the base?' Mayell-chan challenged.
“Tumbarello-chan was not fazed. 'Well, you have to be paying attention to the players, too, and in that case—'
“I stopped the argument there. These two could get into brawls. I went on. 'Now, what we're going to do, is we're going to go to the park and we will play a five-inning game. When the Green Team is at bat, we will use umpires. And when the purple team is at bat, we will use auto-umps.'
“A bunch of the kids yelled, 'No fair!!' I asked, 'How many of you are under five years old?' They all grumbled, because I have said in class many times that things being 'fair' is only for toddlers. Mayell-chan said I should make that the other way around and the auto-ump side should have auto-umps. I said that we can't resolve this issue that way since each side was trying to convince the other side of their point.
“After about an hour of argument we made it to the ball fields in the park. Our school promotes baseball as both an intellectual and physical exercise, so everyone knew, even if only in a rudimentary way, how to play the game.
“I won't go into detail of the game. But the Green team was at bat with two outs and two on—Mayell-chan was on third—and another kid, who hated baseball and was terrified the ball was going to hit her so she always ducked out of the way, was at bat. The score was 5-4 Purple. I had, perhaps stupidly, agreed to let the game go into one extra inning if the Greens could tie the game. The umpires had been rotating positions throughout the game. Tumbarello-san was the home plate umpire at this point.
“The next pitch, and Grinnel-chan had started ducking before it was even thrown, Mayell tried tried to steal home. She shut her eyes when the ball was pitched and barely moved off the base; but the Purple team saw him, and the pitcher threw to the catcher. The catcher had to reach around Grinnel-chan but nevertheless caught the ball and Tumbarello-san called Mayell-chan OUT.
“The amount of fighting, mostly verbal but on one occasion involving fisticuffs, was amazing to be seen and heard. Other teams, older players also practicing in the park, came over to hear the ruckus. The Greens demanded that Mayell-chan was safe, or had been impeded by Grinnel-chan still being in the batter's box through on the other side of home plate. Mayell-chan, livid by this time, even declared that the reason I said the call would stand wasn't that it umpires' calls being respected had been agreed upon beforehand, but because I was biased what with my being 'a girl' and 'girls always stick together' but because I was giving Tumbarello-chan a 'gift' since it was the her birthday.
“We went back to class and I asked the students what they had learned that day. Did they prefer the auto-ump's calls, or the living umpires' calls? Very few minds had been changed, of course. So I asked them, 'As spectators, which side do you think was more fun?' The Purples thought it was all great fun, most of the Greens thought it was 'okay.' Then I asked them, 'Supposing you were really into baseball, and into keeping track of the game and the plays and the strategy, which side do you think was most interesting?' And the concensus came down decidedly on the side with real umpire's making calls which could be argued ad infinitum.
“For the rest of the year, Tumbarello-chan was sure somehow include the word 'out' in every conversation she had, and they were admittedly few, with Mayell-chan. Mayell-chan made sure to report Tumbarello-chan for every perceived infraction of any rule he could think of.
“Mayell is now an ambitious Starfleet Commodore with many war decorations, I'm told, and Tumbarello-chan, now Dr. Shimbo-san, is a Captain. And when they're together, they still act like ten-year-olds.”