Officiating Mistakes: An Element of Baseball

I am admittedly a sports purist, which means I think the games should be played in the same way as the heroes of their past.

So I am absolutely against the overuse of technology in officiating—especially in baseball. It's an organic sport, so there's no reason to bring technology into the equation.

But now the MLB is thinking about using instant replay during its Arizona Fall League next season.

What I hate about this idea is that it is a media creation.

Umpires have made four mistakes concerning home runs this week, that's an undisputed fact. But because writers and talking heads have been paying so much attention to these incidents, MLB is thinking about using instant replay.

Officiating errors happen daily in baseball, but the chatter about using instant replay is not heard every day. The high concentration of a certain kind of mistake in a short period of time is the only reason people are up in arms about umpire errors in baseball.

Mistakes should be expected in baseball. 

Umpires are probably in the hardest position of any official in any league. They are working on a field with more ground than a football field with fewer men in a crew. They are lulled to sleep during slow innings and must react instantly to a sharp throw or ground ball. They must keep their eye on a small ball from a far distance.

Yes, officiating mistakes will happen in baseball and players have made their peace with that.

Alex Rodriguez, the player in the middle of this latest media-made controversy, said he was in favor of instant replay—when it helped him.

He understands one of the principal ideas of baseball: it's a game of averages.

Rodriguez knows that, throughout the course of a baseball season, he and the Yankees will be on the winning end of a blown call about as much as they will be on the losing end.

That's why baseball doesn't need instant replay. In the end, the game will straighten itself out.

Technology would only gum up that natural process.