Open Mic: Come to Think of It...Instant Replay Unnecessary in MLB

It is a human game, played and watched by human beings; it is a slow game, one that takes its pace more from a country road than a city street.

While that may be one of its charms, I wouldn't want to see anything slowdown the game of baseball even further. We're already struggling with getting the kids attention on baseball from other, faster paced, sports and the league is reviewing rules again to try to speed up the game.

All of which points me to the conclusion that we don't need: instant replay.

Occurrences have mainly been focused on whether balls hit to the outfield walls are truly home runs or not and that can be corrected by changes to ballpark configurations rather than a knee-jerk reaction, like instituting instant replay.

We've seen where replay has taken far too long at times in the NFL, and even then, sometimes results in an inconclusive result.

What problem are we really trying to fix here? The vast majority of calls at first base may be “bang-bang,” and may look to the naked eye to be incorrect at times, but are usually right on the money.

So, if we do decide to implement replay in baseball, let's at least limit it to one challenge per game per team, that way, we can limit the interruptions to the flow of baseball.

There does, however, need to be something done about the home runs. In the old days, balls had to pass over a fence, a wall or some other structure to be considered a home run— or land in a basket, like at Wrigley Field. These newer stadiums have yellow markers, or certain places high up on a wall that indicate if a ball is a homer or not.

The short fences and walls that surround the stands need to be reconfigured to make it much more obvious to the eye that a ball is a home run. I'm sure that great engineering minds can think of ways to make this happen without having to resort to the use of instant replay.

In the meantime, how about some concern for the maple bats that keep splintering and coming dangerously close to beheading fans, players and coaches alike? It's bad enough that the thin handles preferred by players today cause bats to break at an alarming rate, sending flying shards of pointed wood pieces all over the park.

While we ignore a potentially dangerous issue like broken bats, we focus instead on instant replay. It might make someone getting seriously hurt to focus on that change. Come to think of it, I'd hate to see a replay of that one.