Does the umpire's opinion matter?

As you bend over and look for the catcher's signal, should you have to wonder what the umpire's opinion of what the strike zone should be? If you watch much major league baseball, you will see that this is in fact what goes on. One guy calls more low strikes, one guy calls more high strikes, another seems to have added an extra six inches to the outside of the plate, it's a truly nauseating display of personal opinion being inserted in place of the rules. What's even worse, is the apparently justified assertion by broadcasters that batters with a good eye and pitchers with great control get the benefit of the doubt on close calls.

In reality, there is only one strike zone, clearly spelled out in the rules. MLB supposedly enforces this upon umpires, but I can't see any result of this. It's unfair that a sinkerball pitcher has a disadvantage when he enters a game called by a high-strike umpire or that a flamethrower has to bring his pitches down too far because of an umpire that prefers the shin-high zone. Giving Tom Glavine an extra 4-6" on the outside of the plate pretty much takes the bat out of a batter's hands.

In baseball, at least at the major league level where money is no object, all of this could easily be fixed. The technology for calling balls and strikes perfectly has existed for many years. It's pretty easy, since the strike zone is well-defined in the rules and not really subjective at all. A machine can easily determine if a pitch passes through a specified volume of space.

Should a Supreme Court Justice's politics matter? No, it shouldn't. I'd be all for Larry Tribe himself sitting on the Court, if he'd honestly judge cases without respect to his opinion of what the proper outcome should be. Justice Breyer has publicly admitted that his opinion of the outcome is his primary standard. He deserves applause for his honesty and scorn, if not impeachment, for his misfeasance.

We can't make a machine that will apply the law, but that doesn't mean that judges should get to decide cases on their opinion of what the correct outcome should be. If judges have the humility to leave their personal opinions aside, it won't matter what their politics are. I'd be happy to let a learned, honest, liberal judge go where the law leads him, but this is not the mainstream of liberal jurisprudence so for now, we must insist on conservative judges.

If GWB can get a stable, long-lived 6-3 vote for judicial humility, perhaps over time we can extract the politics from the confirmation process and remove the judiciary from the unconstitutional legislative role in which it has placed itself (it would help if Congress would more strongly assert its legislative role and not pass vague laws so that the difficult choices would have to be made in the courts). W has an historic chance to restore balance to our government. I think he knows this and wants to do the right thing. The Roberts appointment was a big step in the right direction.

Maybe if the courts show the way, baseball will follow.

UPDATE:

Justice Ginsburg doesn't understand, either:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an audience Wednesday that she doesn't like the idea of being the only female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But in choosing to fill one of the two open positions on the court, "any woman will not do," she said.

There are "some women who might be appointed who would not advance human rights or women's rights," Ginsburg told those gathered at the New York City Bar Association.

So, it's up to the Court to "advance" the "rights" of certain groups? Where does it say that in the Constitution?

UPDATE 2:

Neither does the World's Smartest Woman™:

. . . [B]ecause I think [Roberts] is far more likely to vote the views he expressed in his legal writings, I cannot give my consent to his confirmation and will, therefore, vote against his confirmation.

Via Orin Kerr at Volokh