Bode Miller for MLB Commissioner

This commentary was written by Scott Tinley, a retired professional triathlete and 2 times Ironman World Champion, who writes about fallen heroes and teaches sport humanities courses at San Diego State University.

The beauty of sports is that if you allow it, a good argument about its finer points will elevate your capacity to see both how important and how unimportant sports really are. The last week has seen Jim Joyce's botched call of Armando Galarraga's perfect game reify the notion of scientization in sport. At a mainstream level, it's a polarizing argument: baseball needs to join the 20th century, MLB are tradition merchants, the game is too slow, too cerebral...no, it's perfect, just the right amount of human error, humanness, a place we all wish we could return to.

The challenge of modern commercial sport, however, is that we are too often fed palatable narratives, mostly just controversial enough, and it takes effort to elevate the argument, to look at the finer and deeper aspects of any sport story.

Both Joyce and Galarraga handled the affair with as much grace and integrity as could be imagined under the pressured-dome of professional sport. Fortunately, that story has not been lost on the pundits or sound bite journalists. But what has not been said is that at the root of commercial sport is play. And in between there are games.

All of pro sports are constituted by grown men and women playing childhood games. Forget for a moment the notion of consequences--millions of dollars, careers, health, perfect games--and consider what games are. In his 1978 book, The Grasshopper, 20th century philosopher, Bernard Suits suggested that "playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." What Suits is suggesting is that no one is forced to play a game and that the obstacles - everything from trying to hit a 98 mph pitch to running 90 feet before a player is "safe" - are purposely created to make a game challenging and therefore enjoyable when those obstacles are overcome.

As the obstacles are created by humans in an effort to have some fun, so the rules are both observed and enforced by humans in an effort to fully enable the inherently designed spirit of play. Then what role does technology play in games? While not quite an over-used man vs. machine argument, the effect of scientization on games of consequence is not as simple as technology's ability to alter the speed of play and therefore a public's ability to consume it as entertainment.

A more central issue within the argument of technology in baseball might be who, what, where, when and why would MLB use technology to better its product if not its experience for players and fans alike. This takes time and as we all know, with exceptions to cricket, baseball is the most temporal of all modern sports. There appear more fans siding on the use of technology while players, coaches, and team owners appear happy to move glacially in their embracement of things like instant replay and multiple camera angle calculation.

I don't know what this says about the difference between those watching the games and those playing but it might be suggested that there is a great chasm -- perhaps more so in baseball than most other sports -- between fans and players. The NFL knows its place and its audience and has gone to great links to give them the product they want. NBA and basketball are simple enough; any joe-jock-bag-of-chips can play the game by themselves in their driveway. The Everyman's layup is an at-the-buzzer ally-oop. No problem with connecting that Technicolor dream.

But baseball is caught between then and now, between the dramatic spectacle and a lazy Sunday afternoon out on the diamond with your boyhood pals.

As Suits claims, "to play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs using only means permitted by rules where the rules prohibit use of (something) more efficient in favor of less efficient means and the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity."

So, baseball was created with myriad unnecessary obstacles in an effort to increase the pleasure of a game. And now, when the significant consequences are brought to bear, those man-made obstacles will perhaps be subject to machine-made judgment.

But as man has created machines and American baseball has survived numerous attacks on both its historicity and its immutable integrity, it will eventually find a way to use science to improve the experience of a Sunday afternoon with a beer, a dog, and some friends.

Meanwhile, Bode Miller goes to Hawaii and plays some very good club level tennis in an unspectacular loss while earning money for his charity.

Perhaps he claims a few of his opponents' line calls are in when they are out. Miller, for his part, has always understood the nature and role of play in games, what really counts in pro sports, and what might be left for the public to wrestle with.

Bug Selig, meet Bode Miller.