A14| Tuesday, July 30, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
BYJAREDDIAMONDthis South American nation of 49
million, whose rugged mountains
and winding roads are a natural
breeding ground for riders. At the
cinema, movie trailers are often
interspersed with short films
about youths in the Colombian
countryside dreaming of becoming
the next cycling phenomenon.
In Bogotá, less than an hour’s
drive south of Zipaquirá, an 80-
mile network of roads is closed
down each Sunday and on holidays
for cyclists and runners. Since
1974, the so-calledciclovíadraws
thousands and has become a
model for cities around Latin
America.
Bernal’s win had special mean-
ing for Zipaquirá. Nestled between
rolling green hills a mile and a half
above sea level, it’s known best for
its farm land, flower nurseries and
a cathedral inside a salt mine,
which is a tourist attraction.In this deeply Catholic country,
Gutiérrezwonderedifitwasthe
holy salts running through Bernal’s
veins that had helped him bring
cycling’s highest honor to Colom-
bia. “Our air, our diet, it’s now go-
ing to be known worldwide,” he
said.
Zipaquirá produced Efrain “El
Zipa” Forero, the first winner of
the Tour of Colombia in 1951. In
recent years, other stars like Nairo
Quintana and Rigoberto Urán have
showcased Colombian riders’ dom-
inance in the French Alps.
But for Muñoz, Bernal’s win was
evidence of the effort that his poor
township puts into its youth cy-
cling program. Munoz, who still
competes in international moun-
tain biking competitions, and his
team of instructors run training
sessions for kids with professional
aspirations almost every morning
around Zipaquirá.Cycling is not just a beloved
sport here but also a necessary
means to get around between long
stretches of farm land. The dis-
tances that locals cover on the
bike each day are part of daily life.
“I’m not that much of a cycling
aficionado,” joked John Fredy
Suárez, a 36-year-old, who said he
cycles more than 30 miles a day to
work as a barman at a restaurant.
On Saturday, he was dressed in full
cycling gear and rode more than
two hours from outside Zipaquirá
to participate in the municipal
races with his 8-year-old son, Se-
bastián.
On his final lap of a two-mile
sprint, Sebastián lost his balance
and took a spill. Within seconds,
he got up with the help of Muñoz
and mounted his bike, crying as he
pedaled away. A big grin spanned
his face as he crossed the finish
line.Zipaquirá, Colombia
AS WORD SPREADof Colombian
cyclist Egan Bernal’s imminent vic-
tory in the Tour de France over
the weekend, his working-class
hometown, high up in the Andes,
was already prepping what it
hopes will be the next generation
of champions.
Children as young as 8 years
old, decked out in Lycra bodysuits
and reflective glasses, gathered
here on a half-mile stretch of road
for the kind of amateur races that
gave Bernal—the first Colombian
to win the Tour de France—his
start 15 years ago.
“More Egans, that’s what we
want to find,” said Carlos Muñoz,
59, as riders zoomed by, swerving
around street dogs. Muñoz, who
has been running cycling classes
for underprivileged kids in Zipa-
quirá for 25 years and worked
with Bernal in his earliest ventures
into mountain biking, wiped away
tears as his former pupil crossed
the finish line.
“Now he’s a man and the best
sportsman we have in Colombia,”
he said.
Bernal’s win was vindication for
a nation that has produced scores
of world-class cyclists but has of-
ten fallen short of the European
cyclists who dominate the sport’s
top ranks. Local media quickly
dubbed Bernal “king of the escara-
bajos,” or beetles, the name used
to describe Colombian riders and
their inexorable penchant for
climbing the steepest of hills.
“This is the greatest thing that
could’ve ever happened to us,”
said Edwin Gutiérrez, a 29-year-
old dairy factory worker who had
joined hundreds of supporters in
Zipaquira’s Park of Hope. They
waved Colombian flags and the
jerseys of the national soccer
team, which like the uniform
donned by the Tour de France
leader, is yellow.
Cycling is a religion for many inNADÈGE MAZARS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Fans gather in the main square in Zipaquirá, Colombia, to cheer for local hero Egan Bernal in the Tour de France.Bernal has shown similar resil-
ience. In May, he dropped out of
the Giro d’Italia after he fell off his
bike while training in Andorra and
broke his collarbone five days be-
fore the start of the prominent
competition.
Juan Sebastián Guerrero, youn-
ger brother of Bernal’s fiancée Xio-
mara Guerrero—herself a cham-
pion cyclist—was training with
Bernal when he crashed. He said
Bernal was unfazed and decided to
shift his focus to the Tour de
France.
“I think that fall happened for a
reason,” said Mr. Guerrero, 19, who
is also a full-time cyclist. “If the
trainer tells him to do four hours,
he does five and a half. He’s like a
big brother to us all. He shows us
how hard work can produce re-
sults.”
Shy and soft-spoken, Bernal be-
gan his career in Zipaquirá under
the guidance of his father, a secu-
rity guard and amateur cyclist, and
his mother, a rose picker. He began
with mountain biking, riding the
muddy trails and ramps that run
along the sides of roads here and
had bagged regional and national
championships at an early age. His
talent was recognized by Fabio
Rodriguez, another professional
rider and native of Zipaquirá, who
began coaching him for the pro
track.
Training at high altitude has
made Bernal a fierce competitor in
the steep climbs of the French
Alps. But the balance and quick
steering he perfected on the
mountain bike have helped him
also dominate the high-speed ka-
mikaze descents in road-biking
competitions, Muñoz said.
“Who wouldn’t be a champion
training in these mountains?” said
Denis Rodríguez, 52, who has been
announcing cycling races in Zipa-
quirá for half his life and had seen
Bernal come through the public
youth program. “We breathe cy-
cling here.”BYKEJALVYASBridgewater, N.J.F
acing a 3-2 count in the
seventh inning here Fri-
day night, T.J. Rivera of
the Long Island Ducks let
a borderline changeup
pass by, tossed his bat away and
jogged toward first base. He
thought he had drawn a walk to
break up a perfect game by oppos-
ing pitcher Rick Teasley of the Som-
erset Patriots.
Five steps down the line, Rivera
heard home plate umpire J.B. Tor-
res deliver those two dreaded
words: strike three. Rivera glared
back at Torres, preparing to plead
his case, when he remembered an
important detail: Torres didn’t actu-
ally make the call. A little voice in
Torres’s head told him to do it.
“[Rivera] said to me, ‘I was try-
ing to get that walk, but I forgot it’s
not on you tonight—it’s on the com-
puter,’” Torres said.
Baseball’s future has arrived in
the Atlantic League, a collection of
eight independent professional
teams that span from New Britain,
Conn., to Sugar Land, Texas. In Feb-
ruary, the Atlantic League reached a
three-year agreement to audition a
series of experimental rules for Ma-
jor League Baseball to evaluate,
largely designed to improve pace of
play and generate action. These in-
clude the prohibition of mound vis-
its and defensive shifts, shorter in-
ning breaks and enabling hitters to
“steal” first base on any pitch not
successfully caught in the air.
But last week marked the intro-
duction of the most significant in-
novation: an automated strike zone,
shifting responsibility for calling
balls and strikes from a person to
an emotionless piece of technology
free of the biases and inconsisten-
cies of mere humans. And if the test
goes well, the days of big-league
players imploring umps to schedule
an eye exam could soon come to an
end.
Ducks manager Wally Backman
predicted that MLB will adopt the
system within five years.
“It’s going to happen,” he said.
“There have been a few pitches that
are questionable, but not as many
as if it was a human. The machine
is definitely going to be more right
than they are.”
Every Atlantic League stadium,
including the Patriots’ TD Bank
Ballpark in Central New Jersey, now
features a TrackMan device perched
high above the plate. It uses 3-D
Doppler radar to register balls and
strikes and relays its “decision”
through a secure Wi-Fi network to
the umpire, equipped with an
iPhone in his pocket connected to a
wired earbud. That umpire, posi-
tioned behind the plate as normal,
hears a man’s voice saying “ball” or
“strike” and then signals the ver-
dict.
Over the past few months, theAtlantic League considered other
methods of communication. They
tried using radio waves instead of
Wi-Fi, but learned that doing so
without the proper licenses could
run afoul of FCC policy. Officials ini-
tially gave umpires a wireless Apple
AirPod to keep in their ear, but
abandoned that approach over con-
cerns about battery life. They also
tinkered with the possibility of put-
ting lights on the scoreboard to vi-
sually represent the call or sending
audio tones instead of words to the
umpire’s ear.
In the ballpark, it all looked
seamless, with Torres calling strikes
after just the slightest of delays. Of
the 259 pitches thrown Friday, Tor-
res said he personally agreed with
TrackMan on all but six of them.
“I didn’t have a fear in the world
of having to look at someone and
say, ‘That was there’ or, ‘That had
the corner,’’ Torres said. “It was,
‘Hey, this is the earpiece. You wantto talk to the earpiece?’”
Without a doubt, TrackMan calls
a different strike zone than its mor-
tal counterparts. Pitches at the let-
ters—a strike according to the rule-
book, but almost always ruled a ball
in modern baseball—get called as
strikes. The same goes for breaking
pitches that might technically nick
the bottom of the zone, even if they
wind up at the batter’s feet, result-
ing in the occasional strike that
stretches credibility. TrackMan
gives no leeway on the corners.
For that reason, Patriots man-
ager Brett Jodie said Clayton Ker-
shaw, a pitcher known for his big
curveball, would love the automated
strike zone. Greg Maddux, who re-
lied on two-seam fastballs on, or
just off, the edges of the plate prob-
ably wouldn’t. (The league has al-
ready tinkered with the system to
require the entire ball to cross the
uppermost edge of the zone to trig-
ger a strike and could do somethingsimilar for low strikes.)
“The rulebook strike zone is a
certain thing, but that strike zone
has long since disappeared in the
game of baseball,” Jodie said. “Now
they’re trying to get it back.”
Players expressed mixed feelings.
They appreciate the consistency of
the automated strike zone and the
lack of egregiously bad calls, but
they lament some of the elements
of the game that it eliminates.
The computer renders “pitch
framing”—the coveted ability by
catchers to receive a pitch in a way
that tricks umpires into seeing balls
as strikes—irrelevant. Patriots
pitcher Nate Roe recalled throwing
a pitch in a recent game that badly
missed his target on the outside
corner, instead landing on the in-
side corner. It forced the catcher to
stretch far across his body, moving
his glove completely across the
plate. Roe said with a human um-
pire, that pitch “is probably called aball.” TrackMan, not influenced by
how the pitch looked, called it a
strike.
Some players called that a posi-
tive, arguing that intent shouldn’t
matter. After all, a referee doesn’t
wave off a basketball shot that a
player banks in accidentally or de-
clare an incompletion when the
wrong receiver catches a quarter-
back’s pass. Others say the human-
ity of umpires adds to the game.
Patriots catcher Mike Ohlman,
who appeared in seven games for
the Toronto Blue Jays in 2017,
brought up the example of a persis-
tently wild pitcher who rarely re-
ceives the benefit of the doubt on
close calls because, “You have to
earn that strike.” He sees that as a
tradition worth preserving.
“The plate’s 17 inches wide,” Ohl-
man said. “If you set up outside,
you miss by 17 inches and it catches
the inside part...we’re professionals
here—you shouldn’t be rewarded.”
For now, MLB plans to observe
how well the automated strike zone
does before determining what hap-
pens next. It will almost certainly
move to the minor leagues before
going to the big leagues.
Until then, umpires will continue
calling balls and strikes with their
judgment alone—and players and
mangers will keep calling them
blind.
“We feel it’s incumbent on us to
figure out whether we could make
it work,” MLB commissioner Rob
Manfred said. “That’s what we are
doing.”Egan Bernal’s Tour Win Has Special Meaning in Colombia
SPORTS
Umpire J.B. Torres fits an earpiece that communicates with a strike-calling technology before an Atlantic League baseball game in New Jersey on July 26.Baseball’s Future:
Robot Umpires
In the Atlantic League, the responsibility for calling balls and strikes shifts
from a person to an emotionless piece of technology
DOMINICK REUTER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL