With all of the ongoing developments in technology these days, many of them find their way onto the fields and courts of professional athletics.
The National Football League uses instant replay, arguably more than they should. Collegiate football uses instant replay.
Even the National Basketball Association utilizes this incredible tool of technology to ensure important calls are made correctly.
The National Hockey League has cameras all over the ice to make sure when a goal is truly a goal and when it missed by "that much."
With all of these sports organizations employing the use of instant replay, why is Major League Baseball sitting on their hands and not taking advantage of a much needed tool?
While watching the NY Yankees play the NY Mets in the Bronx tonight, a questionable call arose when Carlos Delgado slapped a slicing ball down the left field line and over the fence.
At first, the ruling on the field was a homerun. But after a cursory meeting of the umpires, the ruling was overturned and declared a foul ball, thus taking away three runs from the NY Mets.
Admittedly, at first glance, the ball could have easily drifted just foul of the line. But technology being what it is today in sports, there were many camera angles readily available to the public.
One in particular showed the foul pole clearly two feet in fair territory.
Closer inspection of the footage showed where the ball careened off the top of the wall in fair territory and then skidded off the foul pole and into a fans lap just inside ground.
For those of you who aren't baseball aficionados, the foul pole is actually in play and if is struck by the ball it is in fact a homerun.
This is just another perfect example of how a rudimentary instant replay system could be incredibly useful in making the right call on the field.
Some might say it will end up being like football and have too many replays and it will just slow the game down. Yea yea yea, I get it.
All this would have to be is a truly "two-challenge" system where the only plays that are reviewed are what coaches challenge themselves. Therefore, a game would have a maximum of four challenges per game.
The play aforementioned would have been a perfect time for Willie Randolph and the Mets to throw the challenge flag and get the two runs more they deserved.
As it is, I am writing this in the middle of the game and the costliness of this error by the umpires has yet to fully be determined.
Hopefully, yet another team will not get robbed of a deserved win due to lack of technology and a lack of officiating.
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4 months ago
Good point. I was watching at the time too, it's really a shame to miss a call that could be corrected for essentially no reason, as you say.
4 months ago
If the MLB were to impliment replay into its games, what is the point of an umpire? Baseball is a game where a call is made every pitch...part of the magic of the game is the fact that there is a part of the game that you can't control..that being the umpire. that's what makes baseball so much better than other sports. I agree that at times it would be nice to have replay of balls that are hit close to the foul pole and could either bef 4 runs or a dismel strike. I think replay would be bad for baseball. Part of the entertainment of the games is when coaches go bizerk at umpires. If replay was implimented...this woudln't happen...you do bring up a very interesting proposition though...replay could change the outcome of games but I just think that baseball is better w/out it
4 months ago
Like the NBA or the NFL, there are really three teams in the play of the game. The referees, judges, and the leagues with their penalties and suspensions form a very powerful team influencing the game in small and large measure. The provably elastic strike zone is only one very powerful imperfection as are calls like the one you point to.
When we play as kids, we referee ourselves and there are but two teams competing. I have always been quite impressed by the degree of seriousness and sense of fairness of the self-refereeing of Ultimate Frisbee, for example. When you take the rules as boundaries to play within rather than boundaries to stretch for personal and/or team advantage, you get a very different ethos to the game. And it is an improvement in the quality of play in the sense that we get to see respect for the boundaries, not disdain.
I predate instant replay in sports. I can't say that replay has improved the sports. If anything, it's been a factor in coarsening the internal ethics of the play. The referees have been increasingly annointed to police behavior that's not appropriate and when it's overlooked (unintentionally or not), the quality of play suffers. There may be no answer to the conundrum when players and coaches are making vast sums per game or season, but to suggest yet another intrusive policing technology is not necessarily in the best interests of the game in my humble opinion. We should be demanding more respect for the game and the spectators from our well-paid participants (referees included).
from 4 months ago
Marty, I agree with most of what you have to say about refs, but I think that replay only helps the refs do a better job. If the technology can hold them more accountable, they are going to think twice before making a bonehead call.
4 months ago
Never. I am one of the majority that think replay has no place in baseball. It is a slow moving game already and if you allowed replay it would just make the game have more delays. In football you aren't allowed to use replay on judgement calls. Baseball is a game of judgement calls so it wouldn't be able to be used if that is the case.
If replay is ever allowed, I cross my fingers it will only be used to check and see if the ball is fair or foul on homeruns only. I just see this as a slippery slope and fear that replay could in fact be used to check on safe vs out, strike vs ball, homerun vs double/triple, etc...
4 months ago
Well, while I agree that there needs to be some kind of restraint at how often a replay can be used in a game, I am very much in favor of having instatn replay in the games. I personally feel there is nothing more frustrating to me as a fan than when the umpires blow it and make poor calls, ESPECIALLY since the general public tends to get a better look than the umpires because of television instant replays. When the umpires mess up, especially in the case of a home run or a close play at a base there is no doubt in your mind they blew it, and personally that bugs me. While sometimes it turns out to not really matter a whole lot, there are pleanty of other times that the poor umpiring radically changes how the inning, and subsequently the game, plays out. That just bothers me to no end.
4 months ago
Instant replay, in my humble opinion, has absolutely no place in the world of professional baseball. Part of the magic of the game is the unpredictability and imperfect nature that comes with having human officials place their judgements during every second of the game. I understand your point of view after watching the Yankees/Mets game myself tonight, but would continue to argue against instant replay due to the following concerns:
1) There were a number of very close ball/strike calls during tonights game. It is a known fact that each home plate umpire carries his own unique strike zone with him whenever he steps behind the plate. Are we to review ball/strike calls that could potentially change the game.
2) Some may claim that they would only want instant replay utilized for "important" calls, but as was mentioned above, this presents much room for interpretation. Soon managers and players will be screaming for everything to be reviewed, and the game will become mechanical and bland.
While I hold my reservations about this topic, your article was well written and I enjoyed hearing your opinions and ideas.
4 months ago
Because instant replay worked so well when Chauncy Billups made that game winning shot with the never-ending 4.3 seconds on the clock.
Instant replay has no place in baseball or any sport. Why even have umpires/referees if you are just going to second guess them with technology? Why not just put RFIDs inside the ball. If the ball strikes any home run part of the stadium (foul pole, back wall, etc) then the foul poles light up red or something automatically. Problem solved instantly. No waiting for video. No trying to find the right angle. Even with video there are times that you can't tell.
I've watched Clint Hurdle and the Rockies cry about every close call ever made in the favor of the Dbacks and seen them get their way more times than not. It pisses me off, but that's the human aspect of the game. I don't need robots or Questek or videos.
What we do need is for stadium design and building to be better regulated to ensure that areas like these (that lead to the inability to tell if a ball is a HR or not) should be eliminated. All outfield walls should be in play and the ball should have to go over them. If they are "too high" then put the yellow line on it and maybe some chalk or something that would leave an impression if a ball hit above the line. Eliminate black walls behind outfield walls that make it impossible for the umps to tell if the ball hit the back wall or the front wall. If a ball touches a fan or doesn't come back on the field, it is a home run, otherwise, fair ball, in play. It shouldn't be that hard. Thanks to Philly, Houston, and other new ballparks with their nooks and crannies, you see all sorts of issues like this. For some reason, I rarely see this problem at a place like Fenway. Low walls all around the outfield and then one giant wall in left. If the ball goes out, HR, if it comes back, in play. End of story.
4 months ago
I generally agree that there's no room in baseball for instant replay. Baseball isn't time sensitive like other sports, where eventually the clock becomes your adversary as well as the other team. That type of game requires officiating as accurate as the ticks of clock the teams are fighting over.
Contrarily, instant replay cannot be blamed for the 22 inning marathon recently played by the Padres and Rockies. Purists will say, "That's baseball"; though I don't know how many purists hung around for 22 innings..in the park as well as in front of the TV. I know I couldn't and didn't.
So if there's to be no instant replay (which I agree there shouldn't be), there needs to be much more publicity surrounding the bad calls that are made and the refs that make them. To keep the integrity of the game, we should hold the officials accountable; in the same fashion that those of us who work for a living are held accountable for our mistakes. The instant replay should be confined to MLB and the World Umpires Association, and we as fans should be advised when those bodies have acted on any official that has repetitively been involved in questionable calls.
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