Robot umpires? Let's leave baseball to real, live human beings.

I have nothing against progress. Some of my best friends are traveling shoe salesmen, and I can't tell you how many times my stone hand ax has come in handy around the cave. But I can't shake the feeling we've gone a tad too far with technology. The latest assault on our humanity came Thursday, when news broke that Major League Baseball would use an automated strike zone at Triple-A this season. It means robot umpires will be one heartbeat from the big leagues -- a ''heartbeat'' being that thing once used to deduce whether a ''person'' was alive.