Human beings make mistakes. Consider the terrible week experienced by Major League Baseball veteran umpire C.B. Bucknor.
MLB’s new Automated Ball‑Strike system has made Bucknor the current personification of human error. Some fans now go to games hoping the home-plate umpire will be humiliated.
But think about this. Had modern officiating technology existed 50 years ago, Colorado sports history would be very different.
On March 28 in Cincinnati, Bucknor umpired a game in which six of eight challenged pitches were overturned. This included consecutive called third strikes that cameras showed were actually balls.
Further video analysis revealed that Bucknor missed about 20 ball-strike calls in that one game. Bucknor already had a bad reputation for calling balls and strikes.
Next came a seemingly easier assignment for Bucknor on March 31 as a first base umpire. On an infield single with a wild throw, the runner’s foot landed squarely on the middle of the bag, but Bucknor ruled the batter missed first base and called him out.
Bucknor was humiliated again when the replay showed he wasn’t even looking in the right direction.
Then, on April Fools’ Day, Bucknor experienced a 100-mile-an-hour foul tip straight off his home-plate umpire mask. Hello, headache and concussion. Bucknor was helped off the field. Technology is exposing Bucknor. Physics is working against him. All signs point toward umpiring obsolescence.
But will sports be better? I think back to Jan. 1, 1978, and a different controversial officiating decision. I was at Mile High Stadium with my father and older brother, exhorting the Broncos to make it to their first Super Bowl.
One play stands out in that frigid battle. First‑and‑goal from the 2-yard line. Rob Lytle took an inside handoff and tried to go airborne over the pile. Raiders hard-hitting safety Jack Tatum annihilated Lytle. Hello, headache and concussion. Raiders defensive lineman Mike McCoy ended up with the football. Lytle ended up with brain damage.
Referee Ed Marion ruled that Lytle’s forward progress was stopped before the ball came out. The Broncos kept possession. Jon Keyworth scored on the next play to put the Broncos up 13-3 in the third quarter. Denver went on to win the AFC championship, 20–17.
Replays clearly showed the ball came out before Lytle went down. The whistle was late. Raiders nose tackle Dave Rowe called it “the most terrible call in all of football.” Enraged by Lytle’s play, Raiders owner Al Davis insisted instant replay was needed to prevent this from happening again and spent years lobbying the league to adopt it.
A dozen years later, another refereeing mistake gave Colorado a share of a national championship. On Oct. 6, 1990, in a critical game at Missouri, the CU Buffaloes somehow got five snaps in a goal‑to‑go situation.
The chain crew, the officials and the entire on‑field team lost track. On what should have been a turnover on downs, Colorado ran a “bonus” play, scored the game-winning touchdown, and escaped with a 33-31 win.
That infamous Fifth Down kept CU’s national title hopes alive. The Buffs finished 11‑1‑1 and went on to share the national championship with Georgia Tech, the only football crown Colorado has ever claimed. Remove that phantom down, and the trophy case in Boulder looks very different.
Now jump ahead to Oct. 1, 2007, and the Rockies’ wild-card tiebreaker 9-8 extra-innings win in Denver. I’m in the stands with my oldest son. Bottom of the 13th, Matt Holliday charges home on a wild play: a drive to right, a crazy relay, a head-first dive into Padres catcher Michael Barrett. Dirt flies, bodies tumble and from our seats we see one thing that matters — an umpire stretching his arms: safe.
Did Holliday actually touch home plate? From where we sat, you could tell me anything. I couldn’t see the plate, the leg, the ball or the chalk. I just remember my son’s beaming face and the jubilant crowd at Coors Field.
The video told a troubling story. Holliday’s hand seems to hit dirt just in front of home and slide past, while Barrett’s leg blocks the one frame that might show contact.
Frame-by-frame analysis reveals Holliday probably never actually grazed the plate. Plate ump Tim McClelland later said he thought he saw Holliday “kind of slide through the leg and touch the plate,” which means he was probably guessing.
If modern technology had been available, it’s possible that Rocktober — one of the greatest months in Rockies history — never would have happened.
As we watch C.B. Bucknor getting corrected by cameras and ridiculed online, we can feel two things at once: relief that technology can fix the worst mistakes, and sadness that we’re handing over decision-making to machines.
Maybe the right attitude is simple gratitude. We got our first Broncos Super Bowl trip, our only CU national title and our one glorious Rocktober run thanks, in part, to human beings who lost track of the ball, the down or the plate.
We should be thankful that these moments happened before technology started controlling outcomes. The calls might not have been perfect, but they were good enough for Colorado sports fans.
Craig Silverman is a former Denver chief deputy DA. Craig is columnist at large for The Colorado Sun and an active Colorado trial lawyer with Craig Silverman Law, LLC.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
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