Instant Replay is Not a Part of Baseball

It will not stop here.

Baseball is arguably the most historical sport; where statistics are critiqued and records are remembered more than birthdays. Most casual baseball fans could tell you that Hank Aaron held the record for most home runs in a career, and current fans could tell you that Barry Bonds broke it.

All baseball fans know that Cy Young was a great pitcher, Babe Ruth a great hitter, and Tommy Lasorda a great manager. No matter what way you spin it; history is a part of baseball.

Nine men play the field. Nine men bat. Fans buy peanuts and Cracker Jacks and root for the home team. Umpires roam the neatly cut grass with ultimate authority. Games at Wrigley Field are generally played in the daytime. These are traditions. Traditions are a part of baseball.

If you have gone through life as a baseball fan, then you have probably heard the old cliché, “baseball is a game of failure”. Mistakes happen at every level. A pitcher throws a changeup too high and fans in the outfield bleachers end up in a scrum. A suicide squeeze goes awry, and suddenly the chance for a quick strike turns disastrous. Mistakes are part of baseball.

For as long as people have swung a stick at a round object, players have argued over the outcome. This is why the umpires have ultimate power. This is why they will never change their call unless another umpire had a better view of the play. Umpires are a part of baseball.

Instant replay is not.

The reason I do not want instant replay in baseball is the same as everyone else’s: it goes against the nature of the sport.

Do not try to convince me of how it would speed up the game, because that is neither relevant nor proven. Would instant replay alleviate arguments? Absolutely not. One manager would argue the initial call, and then the other manager would argue the ensuing correction.

Yes, the call would be correct in the end, but that is not what gives baseball its grandeur. Missed calls are part of baseball.

Managers and players both understand that if an umpire makes the wrong call, it is not going to change. Managers can, and will, argue until they are red in the face, but the most they will get in return is an ejection. What people seem to forget is that being ejected is also part of baseball.

These arguments have to continue, as do the mistakes. Baseball is built on the concept of one pitch, independent from the last, yet still a transition from it. If a home run is taken away, and as a result, called foul, the entire complexion of the at-bat, maybe even the game, has changed. This is not a bad thing. This is part of baseball.

More recently we have seen a multitude of situations where instant replay would be required to determine home runs. It is as if the baseball gods have conspired to provide us with all the information we need to make instant replay a reality in baseball.

This has all happened so fast that there is literally nothing we can do to stop it. Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, has said in the past that he is completely against instant replay in baseball. Now, with the recurring situations presented to him, he has changed his mind, and he has allowed it to seep into our beloved game for home run calls only.

It will not stop there.

What happens when consecutive playoff games are decided by a ball that was ruled a catch when it was not? What about pitches ruled balls when they were strikes, and then the batter goes on to hit a home run? These situations have happened for over 100 years, and are what helped shape our game into what we see today.

The people that are okay with this are the same ones that vehemently opposed instant replay in baseball from the beginning. Now they are content with the fact that instant replay “will only be used to determine if a batted ball is a home run.”

Their minds changed; what is to say the minds of those that run baseball won’t change in the future? What is to stop instant replay from now oozing its way into all aspects of our sport? Once instant replay is implemented, there is truly no stopping it.

Baseball, America’s pastime as we know it, has just lost some allure. It was the only sport where one achieves greatness if he only succeeds 30 percent of the time. Imperfection actually helped baseball, and now, as it vanishes, and modernization of a historic sport replaces it, we can only hope, as baseball fans, that the game we have loved forever will continue to survive this situation.

Mario Mergola is the co-creater and writer at The Digital Blitz.