He Was Out!: Padres-Rockies Proves Need for Instant Replay

Major League Baseball blew it last night.

If the end of the Rockies-Padres game doesn’t prove the need for instant replay in baseball, I don't know what does.

The San Diego Padres may not have deserved to win the game—but Matt Holliday was out at home plate.

It wasn't “inconclusive,” no matter what you hear.

If you watched the replays, you saw Holliday's outstretched hand blocked well in front of the plate by Padres catcher Michael Barrett.

Don’t believe me? Check out the YouTube clip—but make sure you turn the sound down, because the commentary will make you sick.

The angle of Holliday’s fingers indicates that he couldn’t have gotten home. Don't give me any of this “inconclusive” nonsense—just because you can no longer see the plate at the end doesn't mean the replay is inconclusive.

Do what the people on TV don't do and use your brain to form a logical conclusion. If you know where home plate is before it's obscured, you should know where it is after it's obscured.

Unless the gopher from Caddy Shack somehow tunneled underneath Coors Field and moved the dish, it's in exactly the same spot. There's no way Holliday made it based on the angle of his slide and where his hand trailed in the dirt.

Home plate umpire Tim McClelland should have known this too—but let's not blame him. The expectation that anyone could make the right call under those circumstances isn’t only illogical—it’s cruel.

(Then again, maybe we should blame McClelland, because I just watched the clip again and it's clear he wasn't in position until the last second. Why he couldn't make it five feet to his right in the time it takes Matt Holliday to make it 90 feet, I don't know.)

Tim Kurkjian, among others, says that instant replay would destroy the sanctity of baseball.

He’s a complete f---n idiot.

I don't think any two words in the English language could sum it up better.

If anyone needs a refresher on the technological changes that have made the game better, how about lighter bats, bigger gloves, more comfortable uniforms, night games, padded walls, better fields...

Additionally, and excuse my journey into the existential, but I need to go there to get to the real heart of the matter:

Back in the days before multiple camera angles and slo-mo replays, an umpire's judgment was what people relied on to keep the game "pure." Since no one could ever really see what happened, the umpire must have gotten it right...so the "purists" associate an umpire's judgment with preserving the sanctity of the game.

In a world with ever larger gray areas, sports is the only black-and-white/right-and-wrong we have left.  Holliday's hand either hits the plate or it doesn't—and that's what should affect the game, not someone's interpretation of what happened.

To NOT use instant replay in 2007 violates that purity of baseball, because we're bombarded by images and close-ups of what really happened.  Sports shouldn't be subject to the same bureaucracy and hidden truths as the rest of the "real" world.

Fraudulent presidential elections, a bogus war in Iraq, Dick Cheney and Co.'s corrupt power practices—we watch sports because we expect an escape from all of that.

We want to know that what we see is what we get.

With their season on the line, Brian Giles and Michael Barrett combined for one of the most clutch throw-and-plate blocks you'll ever see. It was perfect, and might have saved the Padres season.

Of course, we'll never know for sure, because the lack of instant replay took an earlier home run away from Colorado. So really, the game was a fraud from the seventh inning on.

Someone explain why I bother to watch Major League Baseball.  If I want to see a bunch of people who can't do their jobs correctly supervised by an incompetent idiot who doesn't take steps to fix anything, shouldn't I be watching CNN?