[The Poet]

Technology to improve competititve events? Hey, why not? Back in 1997 IBM's Deep Blue defeated champion master Garry Kasparov in chess. Just a few years ago their Watson supercomputer won over two former champions in Jeopardy. Let's embrace it in other sporting contests, and let's not stop at replay. Why draw the line there? Let's have robotic pitchers, android fielders, and cyborg batters too. Let's eliminate every human element from the game whatsoever, and have a pure and errorless product, be said errors physical, emotional, mental, or observational. Then we could perhaps not only remove the DH from baseball, but the DL to boot. Shoot, with the more predictable performance, and thus outcome, from such contests, we could likely remove the game itself because we'd know the final before the first pitch, and even the WS champs before spring training.

I'm all for it. I would not WATCH it, but I'm not one to stand in the way of progress.

Do you think I am kidding? Well, some, certainly. But consider for a moment, for instance, how much money the USGA spends each year testing new golfballs and clubs to assure that no player will receive any unfair advantage over his opponents due to advances in technology, or the similar testing that NASCAR or America Cup officials perform. Is it really that much of a stretch for one to foresee robo-wars moving from the world of nerds into the arena of competitive sports? So despite the fantastical aspect of my scenario, the main point remains: The more "human" elements you remove from the game, the more "inhuman" it becomes, by definition.