Welcome to the future, folks. And the future has spoken: that was a ball.

In one of the first high-profile uses of the Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS), a comically bad strike call in the Braves-Athletics game was immediately overturned in the first inning. The crowd erupted. The players looked stunned. And somewhere, an umpire's pride took a beating.

The video tells the story. The pitch was nowhere near the zone - and I mean nowhere near. The home plate umpire called it a strike anyway, either because he lost track of the pitch or just had a moment of complete mental failure. But before anyone could even finish arguing, the call was overturned.

Strike? Nope. Ball. The system has spoken.

Look, I've been calling baseball for two decades. I've seen bad calls. I've seen really bad calls. I've seen calls so bad that managers get themselves ejected just on principle. But what makes this different is that it got fixed in real time.

No argument. No ejection. No replay review that takes five minutes. The system caught it, corrected it, and the game moved on.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. "But Mike, this takes the human element out of the game! Baseball is about tradition!" And you know what? I hear you. There's something romantic about the idea of the umpire calling balls and strikes, about the cat-and-mouse game between pitchers and umps, about players working the zone based on how a particular ump is calling the game.

But here's the thing: tradition doesn't make you right. And when you're calling a pitch that's six inches outside a strike, you're not adding to the game - you're taking away from it.

I've watched too many games decided by blown calls. Too many perfect pitches called balls. Too many terrible pitches called strikes. Too many at-bats, innings, and even games that turned on a bad call by an ump who's human and fallible and just missed it.

The ABS system doesn't miss. It's not perfect - no technology is - but it's a hell of a lot more consistent than human eyes trying to judge a 95-mph fastball moving in three dimensions.