Scale of 1 to 10: How Tired of ABS are MLB Umps Already? 100?!?!?

The Rich Eisen Show took a caller named Jimmy from San Antonio, and Jimmy floated a fix for Major League Baseball's umpire problem that nobody had on the bingo card. If umpires are getting embarrassed by the new automated ball-strike challenge system, hand the gig to the Savannah Bananas umpires and let the embarrassment become the bit.

Rich loved it. He played the scenario back for the room. While the pitch is coming in, the umpires sing Hamilton. They do backflips. Confetti goes off in their face when they get the call wrong, like Rip Taylor in his prime. Jimmy admitted he had made it up on the fly. The room ran with it anyway.

Underneath the riff sat a real point Rich kept coming back to. The ABS system has an entertainment dimension that everyone keeps overlooking. The league could simply pop a static dot on the screen showing where the pitch was. Instead, the broadcast cuts to the strike zone graphic, the trail of the ball, the suspense of waiting to see if it caught a piece. "There is a whole presentation to it," Rich said. "The ABS, I kind of dig it."

He pulled out the Jonah Heim moment from the previous day's Atlanta Braves game to show where the system still cracks under pressure. Heim caught what looked like a strike. The ball squirted out of his glove. There was a runner on first who could advance on the loose ball. Heim retrieved it. Then he tapped his helmet to challenge the call.

The home plate umpire said no. Too late. The challenge has to come within the window of the pitch landing at the plate. Heim's logical question, which Rich repeated in his voice, was clean. What was Heim supposed to do, tap his helmet while running to retrieve a ball and let the runner take second base?

Rich asked the room a follow-up that pushed the absurdity further. If Heim had not retrieved the ball, just stood there tapping his helmet, and the call had come back as a strike, can the runner advance on what is technically still a passed ball at the moment of the call? Yes, the table agreed, the runner can advance. Which is exactly the bind Heim was caught in. He could either chase the ball or challenge the call, and the rules pick winners and losers based on which one he chooses first.

"It just drives me nuts when umpires and refs do not apply common sense ever," Rich said. He called the job tough enough on its own. He just wanted some flexibility for situations the rule book did not anticipate.

From there, the bit widened. Rich pivoted to the NFL, which holds a three-day extravaganza for a draft that could in theory be released in an hour on an encrypted website. Eight hundred thousand people show up in Pittsburgh. There are musical guests. There is a Thursday, a Friday and a Saturday. The point landed back on the original question. The ABS could simply pop a result on the screen. Instead, MLB is making a little show out of it. Rich was just wondering if the umpires were getting tired of being part of the cast.