U.S. — As baseball’s opening weekend ended with the sports world buzzing about the new Automated Ball-Strike System changing the game, MLB umpires admitted that they’ve kinda just been guessing this whole time.
With fans and journalists alike noting the alarming number of ball and strike calls of umpires being overturned in just the first few days of the season, umpires finally confessed that they’ve been pretending to know what the strike zone was since baseball was invented.
“Honestly, you’ve got us here, we don’t know what a ‘strike zone’ is,” said longtime umpire Hunter Wendelstedt. “A lot of us have been doing this for years, and we’re not any closer to understanding what we’re doing now than we were when we started. You know what they say, ‘Fake it till you make it.’ We all made it as MLB umpires, but we’ve still just been faking it the entire time. Is there an actual ‘strike zone’?”
The umpires revealed that the ruse had been something that had existed throughout the history of the game and had been passed down from the umpires of old. “Legend has it the first umpires agreed to pretend they knew what balls and strikes were,” said umpire Laz Diaz. “We’re skeptical that anyone will ever be able to define the difference. I think it’s a myth. As an umpire, the real balls and strikes are whatever your heart tells you.”
At publishing time, NFL referees had also released a statement admitting that they had no idea what “pass interference” really means.
Do you think you can guess which one is the terrorist?
