Time Has Come to Use Instant Replay in Home Run Calls

Instant replay has found its way into many of our major sports, but it was never thought to be an option for baseball.  That was until last week, where a series of blown home run calls have led many to believe it is now a necessity.

I may be opening Pandora's Box, but if limited to home-run calls, it would benefit the accuracy of the game.  It would help the flow of the game by eliminating a major catalyst of long manager arguments with umpires and giving a time limit on the review. It may even quicken the pace of baseball.

Usually in under a minute, the game announcers can determine that a home-run call was blown, as seen by Alex Rodriguez’s home-run off of the cement staircase in right-center Field in Yankee Stadium.  By freeze-framing the replay, it was quickly determined the ball hit the stairs and bounced back onto the field.

New ballparks have tricky corners and yellow home-run lines drawn on walls that are very difficult to accurately determine in a split second from a couple hundred feet away.  Balls sometime return so quickly to the field of play, it is nearly impossible to determine their landing points.

Replay is now a necessity for home-run calls, but it must be a limited use of technology.  It is a system that can work, and we have seen it been put to limited use in deciding the legitimacy of “buzzer-beaters.”  I offer a solution that will allow home-runs to be accurately called and will actually help the pace of the game. 

A video umpire stationed either in a box located near the field or in the press box can quickly make an accurate call on home runs, only.  In contrast to football replay, we would not be counting on the on-field officials to re-verify their own calls.

This judge would be similar to the hockey goal judge who could call down to the field umpires in case of a wrongly called home run.  This would take time away from manager arguments and would ease the minds of some umpires who stated that they had “lost sleep” over their mistakes that could have a major impact on the outcomes of games.

Just imagine how history would have been rewritten if this system existed before.  Sorry, Yankees fans, but Jeffrey Maier would not be a hero in Yankees lore but would have been “Bartmanized” in interfering with Derek Jeter’s home-run ball in the 1996 ALCS.  I am still a firm believer that this call sparked the Yankees Dynasty of the late 1990s. 

Now this is not a cure-all. There are difficult home run calls, which even with video replay, would be hard to decipher.  Especially when dealing with the foul pole, the angles can be very deceiving at times.  But this would only lead to more extensive camera angles and a continued evolution of a baseball broadcast.  Remember, it was the XFL that introduced the cameras on field which moved on cables. This has since become a staple of the NFL broadcast.