Let's go back to Yankee Stadium. Innings before Lance Berkman was ever brought up, Carlos Delgado was at bat in the fourth inning with two runners on. He took the Chien Ming Wang offering and sliced a deep line drive into the left field corner. The ball ricocheted off the lower portion of the foul pole (which at Yankee stadium is black and not yellow for some reason) for an apparent three run homer. Third Base Umpire Mike Reilly was overruled by Homeplate Ump Bob Davidson, and the call was reversed. In this game, the mistake was not important to the ultimate outcome, as the Mets won handily. Last night, Alex Rodriguez had a second home run called a double, in another game that was a blow-out.
Two botched calls. In the same stadium. In the same week. It seems that MLB needs to follow suit of every major professional and collegiate sports leagues in the United States, and implement some sort of instant replay. The NFL has been tinkering with instant replay for the past twenty years. It has improved the quality of games, and has added a new dimension to these contests, in my opinion. The infamous "Tuck Rule" 2002 playoff game aside, instant replay has been successful. Games haven't dragged on into five hour melee's. Only certain calls are reviewable, limiting a Head Coach's ability to dissect every possible snap. The NBA, NCAA Basketball and Football are among the other sports that offer instant replay to some extent.
I'm not proposing that baseball turn to the replay booth on disputed balls and strikes. That is one area that would take away so much of what makes the sport intriguing. On the other hand, home runs, calls concerning out/safe on the basepaths and other defensive plays should be able to be reviewed by the umpiring crew. I mean, an incorrect call by an umpire have affected countless games, even a World Series. The league needs to step up and get this call right.
Am I confident that it will? Well, the Stirke of 1994 halted two players chances to become the first (and second) in half a century to compilie a .400 batting average over the course of an entire season. In Montreal, the Expos were playing the best baseball of any team that season before the labor stoppage occured. By time the players took the field again the following year, fans did not return in Montreal, and the death of the Expos was not a question of if, but when. It took a steroid infused power binge by McGwire and Sosa to bring a lot of fans back to baseball. In the aftermath, the most hallowed record in American sports fell to a man whose callous jealousy was a result of seeing the adulation that those performance enhanced players received in the summer of 1998.
I'm not at all trying to say that baseball will lose it's fan-base over instant replay. What I am trying to argue is that baseball has made decisions in the past that have been short sighted, and have hurt the sport a great deal. In the crowded American marketplace of entertainment options, baseball is but one of thousands. It is the Great American Pastime, but it is far from the only American pastime. Hopefully, MLB recognizes this, and a step in the right direction can be made as far as instant replay is concerned.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Not Again, Not Again
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2 comments:
This is a great idea! But why stop at instant replay to get a blown call corrected? Let's just ensure the calls are NEVER blown! With today's technology, a computer can determine in a nanosecond whether a ball is fair/foul, homer/double, and whether a runner is safe/out at any base. So let's just let the computers do the work for everything except balls/strikes, and display the result on the jumbotron. One umpire per game. No more arguing, no more kicking dirt on an ump, nobody for the players to complain to.
I've never heard a good argument for why this wouldn't be just as reasonable as instant replay.
In fact, since there's now a system for judging how well an umpire does in calling balls and strikes, why not use that system as well? Oust the home plate ump. IT'S THE EXACT SAME THING. There is a strike zone defined in the official rule book. Get the calls right. Your argument that that "makes the sport intriguing" is ridiculous. All of it makes it intriguing.
Leave replay out. The rhythm of the game is more important than correcting the dozen or so calls a season the umps get wrong, almost all of which have no impact on the game's result. Baseball players depend on rhythm more than any other sport. Pitchers and batters both depend on it. Let's talk about ways to make the games shorter, not longer. Let's talk about what's broken in the game, like 9EST start times for playoff games, so no kid can watch past the 3rd inning. Fix what's broken, then worry about the unimportant junk like a blown call now and then.
"With today's technology, a computer can determine in a nanosecond whether a ball is fair/foul, homer/double, and whether a runner is safe/out at any base."
Really? I've never heard of such technology -- that's probably why you haven't heard any arguments pertaining to it.
Sure there are more important things, but the rythm of the game is hardly a reason to quash an idea that can fix a problem that's easily fixed. Maybe just in the playoffs, but something has to be done, you have to at least admit that.
Balls and strikes calls are what makes the game interesting. It's involves the catcher being skillful and the pitcher being deceptive to get his calls. There are limitations to pitch/fx as well. My point, is that it's not the same thing.
Nice hyperbole, but I don't think your argument is very sound.
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