The National Pastime is about to undergo a change that few baseball purists will like.

Guaranteed.

I’m one of them. What will we dislike? It will be the introduction of instant replay cameras.

OK, I know what you’re saying. Football has it. So what? I hate it in football too. It slows down the game. It tries to replace the human element with machines that help humans decide whether they’ve made the right call.

Now it well might be baseball’s turn.

Baloney.

I’ll now stipulate some important points about the game I used to love. I detest the designated hitter rule; I hate watching baseball played indoors … on carpets; I cannot stand watching batters suit up with body armor as if they’re taking part in a medieval joust; I’m not even that crazy about pine tar or batting gloves.

I’m old-fashioned when it comes to baseball.

Now we have the prospect of one of the game’s great traditions — the rhubarb — giving way to technology. The rhubarb occurs when the manager storms out of the dugout to get in the ump’s face; he’ll turn his ball cap backward so he can get right up to the ump’s face to be sure he get sprayed with spittle while yelling things like, “Bleep you, you bleeping blanket-blank!” When he says the “magic word,” which of course is “you,” that gets the manager tossed from the game.

Now we well might see close calls decided by someone sitting way up yonder in a control room. They’ll play back the event and someone in that control room will determine if the ump made the call.

I’ve long wanted technology to give way to the human element. Of all the calls umps — and refs in football — make during the course of a game, they get 99-plus percent of them right.

Let ’em make the call. And if they get it wrong, let the manager storm out of the dugout and kick a little dirt on the umpire’s shoes.