That’s the headline from Time Magazine.

Bad calls by the ump are as much a part of baseball as home run records, rabid fans and watery beer, but a new study shows that an umpire’s decision may have a disturbing ulterior motive: 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.

Sounds bad, right?  Umpires favoring pitchers of their own race?  What a terrible disgrace to the purity of the game.  Or, it would be a disgrace if it were actually happening.  In reality, umpires favor pitchers of their own race a grand total of...one pitch per game.

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.”

Well sure one wrong call on a pitch could change the course of a game, but how is one bad call on a pitch per game evidence of racism?  Or even favoritism of any sort?  I’d expect an umpire to make one bad pitch call per game just by making mistakes.  Umpires are human, and sometimes balls and strikes are hard to call.

This article is ridiculous.