Instant Replay, the instant replay

Ryan’s written about this already, so consider this an instant replay of the previous mentioned subject, but from a different angle.

Commissioner Bud Selig has been long trying to find ways to speed up the game. The games run a long time, and aren't filled with the intense action of football and hockey, where players are running into each other, knocking each other down, and in general putting themselves in harm's way constantly. (Minnesota Twins apparently play the fastest games in the majors, but there are some nights they need to speed things up, too.)

Like Ryan mentioned, part of baseball’s charm is the human element. Some days, the strike zone is just a tiny keyhole. Other days, the strike zone is so big, you could fly a 747 through it. As a fan, this doesn’t bother me--as long as it’s consistent for both sides. It’s not fair giving Greg Maddux a strike zone big enough to drive a truck through, while his opponent has a strike zone the size of a Matchbox car. It’s frustrating to see a location called a strike for one pitcher, and a ball for the other. I have an acquaintance who would like to see balls and strikes called mechanically--the technology exists to do that, but no. I’m not in favor of that.

So, instant replay. There are multiple times it could be used. I listen to the radio at the ballpark, and have friends at home who are watching on TV. It’s very frustrating to be sitting there after a player has been called out attempting to steal and thinking, "he looked safe to me", and hear from the radio, or from friends, "he was safe." It can change the course of the game. Instead of a runner on second with no outs, there are no runners on with one out.

When a ball is hit down the line, and the umpire gets turned around, he has to make the best call he can from what he sees. He has to decide if the ball went over first in fair or foul territory. When a batter checks his swing, the first or third base umpire has to decide whether he truly checked it, or failed to check it. When a ball is hit towards the stands, should fan interference be called, or was the ball out of play? When a ball is hit close to the foul pole, was it a home run or a “long strike”? For that matter, did the pitcher really commit a balk or not? And was that ball really caught on the fly or did it bounce as the fielder dived for it? (A couple of years ago, Torii Hunter was nominated for some fan-based vote award--best outfielder or something. The video they had to highlight his skills showed clearly that the ball bounced before he caught it, but the umpire called it caught. A day later, mlb.com picked a different video where Hunter actually did make a catch.)

When should instant replay be made available to the umpires? I’m in favor of never. Just let the umpire make the call, and move on. They’ll get it wrong. And it will be annoying and frustrating every time. However, sometimes they’ll get it wrong against the team you’re cheering for, and sometimes they’ll get it wrong in favor of the team you’re rooting for.

The main reason I don’t want it for anything is because once you allow something, it makes it easy to allow more. Today, we’re allowing instant replay on home runs (which might not be a bad idea). Two years from now, someone will argue that it’s needed on base-stealing calls. And some day in the future, umpires will all be sitting in their homes, watching the games on TV making the calls, and the fans in the stands will have to await every call to be announced on the JumboTron. That will take all the fun out of booing the umpire when he doesn’t make the call in my favor…

Speed the game up. Let the umpires make the calls as they see best, accept that they’re humans and they’ll make mistakes, and move on.

Instant replay

The biggest debate these past few weeks among the baseball loving community has been whether or not instant replay is a good idea for the game. I figure it's my turn to chime in.
The first thing people supporting the idea of replay point to is its success in other sports. While it is true that replay has been an important improvement for the NFL, NBA and NHL, the comparison strains under the fact that replay in those sports is practically a necessity. In baseball, there is not the constant activity seen in those other sports. With 12 athletes on the ice, the NHL has four officials skating. The NFL has 7 officials to manage 22 competitors. The NBA uses three referees in order to monitor 10 players. In all three games, that is a lot of action to cover. In baseball, there is one person designated to monitor the one thing going on, be it the pitch, the play at first or the fly ball in the outfield. For the most part, umpires don't need the help like officials in other sports need.
Part of the mystique of baseball is that it is a game designed for intelligent fans. Statistics are so easily interpreted and derived, situational defensive positioning and hitting so prominent in the game. One of the mental facets of the game is getting inside of a hitter, convincing him that a fastball is coming and dropping in a curveball, busting him inside, things like that. Smart pitchers, like Greg Maddux, are in demand because of their command of that fluid entity that is the strike zone. Not only that, but Maddux, through his years in the league, has garnered the respect of the men in blue, and perhaps a little leniency on the corners have allowed his Hall of Fame career to continue, as he doesn't have to throw in a smaller window, allowing hitters to key on pitches that have never been overpowering. As stupid as that reasoning may be, it is and has been a fundamental aspect to the way the game has always been played and shouldn't be altered.
That being said, as the other big three sports have advanced technologically, or in the NFL's case, fundamentally altering the rules over time, replay has been used to keep up with these changes. The NFL has seen itself evolve from a running oriented game to embracing the forward pass, necessitating several officials downfield as the area of action can quickly change by 30-40 yards. It's easier if there are cameras available as back up. In the NBA, a red light flashes behind the backboard when the time runs out, eliminating any equivocation on whether or not a shot was fired off before time expired. The NHL uses replay to determine the validity of questionable goals, as officials often need to navigate their way through 4 guys in their ever more bulky pads and simply can't see what just happened. The game of baseball has remained relatively unchanged for decades.
There is one exception. Every stadium is different, and MLB has managed to deal with that by allowing for specific ground rules from stadium to stadium. Different stadiums also have different iterations of outfield bleachers that umpires must become familiar with from city to city. Because of this, because there is so much going on with a home run call, I have no problem with replay for situations where the veracity of a home run call is questioned. It sounds like that is what is on the table, so hopefully that's where it ends.