Racism In Baseball? You Don't Say!

A new study reported on at the Time/CNN website claims that baseball umpires' decisions are indirectly motivated by racism.

According to the new study led by Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, Major League Baseball umpires tend to call more strikes when the pitcher is of their same race; when they're not, umps call more balls. It doesn't happen all the time — in about 1% of pitches thrown — but that's still one pitch per game, and it could be the one that makes the difference. "One pitch called the other way affects things a lot," says Hamermesh. "Baseball is a very closely played game." What's more, says Hamermesh, a slight umpire bias affects more than just the score; it also has an indirect effect on a team's psyche. Baseball is a game of strategy. If a pitcher knows he's more likely to get questionable pitches called as strikes, he'll start picking off at the corners. But if he knows he's at a disadvantage, he might feel forced to throw more directly over the plate, possibly giving up hits.

Bias in officiating is nothing new in the world of sports. A study released last May showed that referees in the National Basketball Association make racially biased calls too, calling more fouls against players of the opposite race. That was the study that spurred Hamermesh to look at the issue in baseball, and he thinks his findings are even more revealing — in basketball, fouls are called by an entire officiating crew, but in baseball most calls are made exclusively by the home-plate umpire. "In the NBA you don't always know who is making the calls, whereas in baseball it's the home-plate umpire," Hamermesh says.

Hamermesh, who has studied discrimination at all levels, says that bias is instilled in infancy — much like enduring personality traits such as shyness or high self-esteem — as an essential part of human behavior. "We all have these subconscious preferences for our own group," he says. Ever the economist, Hamermesh adds, "It's important to look at it in baseball because of the amount of money that's being made — the salary of the umpires, baseball players and the amount of revenue that's being made by the industry. All these things make this important."

Though his research confirms that bias exists, Hamermesh says it can be easily reduced or eliminated. When a game's attendance is particularly high, when the call is made on a full count or when ballparks use QuesTec, an electronic system that evaluates the accuracy of umpires' calls after the game, the biased behavior disappeared, according to the study. "The umpires hate those [QuesTec] systems," Hamermesh says. "When you're going to be watched and have to pay more attention, you don't subconsciously favor people like yourself. When discrimination has a price, you don't observe it as much." Right now, the QuesTec system is used in 11 of MLB's 30 ballparks, mostly in the American League.