Friday, May 23, 2008
Instant Replay or Not?
Major League Baseball Umpires blew three home run calls in the short span of three days. Those travesties have apparently caused MLB officials to speed up their efforts in consideration of instant replay for certain situations in professional baseball. Those particular situations primarily involve fair or foul home run balls. I would personally like to see them include catch or trap plays also in the review process. However, I do agree with many of the baseball traditionalists who insist that the 'human element' is a part of the game. Always has been, always should be. Yea, let's not get too robotic with this thing. Just get the call right and take as little time as possible in doing that. A booth replay of A-Rod's homer that was ruled a double a couple of days ago would have been much faster than the four umpires huddled together discussing it and still getting it wrong. A trap or catch call in the outfield could be handled the same way, and if it's indecisive in the booth, let the call on the field stand and continue to play ball. The so called purists who are concerned about the time it takes to complete an MLB game should realize that the review of just these two situations we've mentioned could actually speed up the game. In reality, the length of a game hasn't increased but a few minutes over the years. I think the figure I heard was 11 minutes. Come on guys, it's eleven minutes at the ballpark, not in the dentist's chair having a root canal. "Take me out to the ballgame" is a FUN thing; it's fine to me if it runs over eleven minutes. But back to the subject at hand. Leave the ball and strikes, the safe or outs, the ejections(they're fun too!), and all the other traditional baseball 'stuff' during the course of a game to the umps. Just bring in the modern technology to get the fair/fouls and the catch/trap calls correct. And don't forget, it's still a grand ole game, so don't ever tamper with that!
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