MLB and Replay Review: Strange Keystone Combination

I was treated, twice in one game, to my first instances of umpire review of replays in a major league ballgame.

The Tigers were playing the Brewers at Comerica Park when Miguel Cabrera launched what obviously was a two-run homerun into the bullpen in left field. Imagine my surprise when the umpires ruled it in play and Cabrera stopped at first base for a long run-scoring single.

Everyone in the stadium knew it was gone, even the Brewer left fielder, who barehanded the ball when it bounced back into the field of play, knew it had been hit over the wall.

The umpires huddled for a time before, unable to come to consensus, heading off the field to review the play on replay before coming back to signal that Cabrera had indeed hit a homerun. Somehow it seemed anticlimactic to watch him circle the base paths from first base, where he’d been standing during this delay.

Two innings later Dusty Ryan hit what appeared to be a two-run homerun to left field and again the umpires huddled before heading off to watch a replay. The replays we viewers saw showed the ball had hit the yellow stripe atop the padding along the wall, which by rule is considered in play, so I suspected this homerun would be overturned, and so it was.

It could be argued that instant replay had allowed the umpires to make the right calls this night. So why does an old baseball purist like me feel sickened by baseball’s embrace of modern technology to get the right call?

The NFL has had instant replay for years and I’ve seen plenty of calls reversed; most go unturned, the call entrusted to the official on the field. I’ve been against instant replay in football from day one.

The truth is, in sports calls are missed. It’s part of the game. As a fan of one team or the other, you understand that fact, and you hope that the call that goes against your team at the end of the first half will be followed by a call in your team’s favor in the second half. They even out─unless your team happens to be the Detroit Lions.

In baseball calls are missed every night of the season. I see pitches on an inning-by-inning basis called strikes that look to be balls and pitches called balls that look to be strikes. As a spectator, I’ve learned to accept this fact and look, as the players do, only for consistency─that the visiting team isn’t getting that outside strike while the home team doesn’t.

When will major league baseball decide to call balls and strikes from the perspective of the center field camera?

In the case of Cabrera’s homerun, as I sit typing these words, I’m still aghast that four umpires could miss the trajectory of a ball that clearly was hit out of the park only to bounce back onto the field of play. I’ve seen umpires huddle to discuss similar situations, and I applaud that. Sometimes the best view isn’t the view closest the ball. Most of the time, after a brief confab, they get it right, without benefit of watching a replay.

Tonight I’m left to wonder, during the rain delay at the Copa with the Tigers leading the Brew-Crew 7-4, when instant replay will be used to get the right call in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series on a close play at the plate.

Right now instant replay can’t be used in such instances, but really, those are the calls that are most often missed. The umpire watches the base runner touch the plate and misses the instant the catcher makes the tag; or he watches for the tag and misses the instant in which the base runner touches the plate. He is often left to guess. I’ve seen as many slow motion instant replays that show the umpire missed the call as I have seen the umpire making the right call.

It’s part of the game.

It’s part of the game’s beauty.

Review of a slow motion replay is a blight to that beauty.