The Cat and the Umpire

Whelp, tonight, which would be Wednesday August 16, 2006, in Fenway Park, when the Red Sox and Tigers meet, history will be made behind the plate. No, not the catcher, behind him - Bruce Froemming will umpire his 5000th game, second place all-time. Cheers to Bruce, but when I hear that kinda thing, I want to know who's first place. Whelp, that would be ole Bill Klem at 5374, and that gives us a perfect chance to discuss quantum physics.

So an object exists in a particular state at a certain point in space and time. Or does it? Well, the probability that it does can be measured as a wave function, best accomplished over a hot cup of tea with Mos Def. This theory was first proposed by a cat named Erwin Schrodinger, who took it a step further - that you can never really know the state of an object until it is observed. Before it is observed or a measurement made, the object can be in one of a variety of states - in fact in a nether state, or the sum of all possible states as expressed by Schrodinger's wave function.

To illustrate this point people often use the example of a cat in a box. Schrodinger's original example box also had in it uranium and a shotgun, but we'll simplify it and leave it as a cat, which is either dead or alive. So what is the state of the cat before we open the box and look inside? Well, the only thing we can say for sure is this - the cat is in a state described by a wave function that equals the sum of a live cat and a dead cat.

This confuses many people, and in fact Schrodinger himself only invented the example to show how ludicrious his theory was. But this was in the 1920's, before LSD made his theory comprehensible. I myself prefer to use the example of good ole Bill Klem, who was in the prime of his umpiring years when Schrodinger was scrambling around for examples. See, when you would ask Klem if a pitch was a ball or a strike, he would say "It ain't nothing till I say what it is."

Ah finally, quantum theory even a Texas education can understand - that a pitch is recorded as a ball or a strike depending on the observation of the umpire. In the moment where everything is still, the catcher frames the ball, the pitcher glares in, the batter holds his wrists steady - in that moment the pitch is in a state that is neither and both ball or strike, the sum of all possible outcomes.

So next time you're watching a baseball game, take special enjoyment out of that little moment before the ump makes his call - you're experiencing the essence of quantum physics. A little LSD helps.