Baseball’s use of replay falls short
In August, Major League Baseball took its first step toward using instant replay to help decide fair or foul calls on questionable home runs.
From every indication, that’s as far as the Commissioner’s office will be going in using technology to help umpires make correct on-field calls.
That’s too bad.
The way the new system works, as many as three people monitor every game in MLB’s Advance Media office in New York. When an umpiring crew chief decides he needs to see a replay of a questionable home run call, he leaves the field to telephone one of the game monitors. They have access to every broadcast feed and usually have two or three angles of the play.
Umps fear expansion
Three seconds after a replay is shown by a network or station, the Advance Media office delivers it to the crew chief who then makes his final judgment. The entire process takes about two to three minutes — not too long when a critical call needs to be made.
While you’d think the umpires would welcome all the help they can get, the opposite is true. The fear they originally expressed about using instant replay on boundary calls is that it will lead to expanded use.
One umpire said, “There’ll be a controversial call on the baselines and people will start saying, ‘We have the technology so why don’t we use it for other things?’ Then pressure will mount on the higher-ups and they’ll succumb to public pressure and start using it for everything.”
What’s wrong with that?
As a couch potato who has put in a lot of time in front of the tube this season, I have to say the umpiring has been as bad as I can ever remember. Admittedly, umpires are human beings and are bound to make occasional mistakes, but the rate of errors this year in calling balls and strikes and calls on the base paths has been appalling.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting MLB use instant replay for calling balls and strikes, even though the technology the networks and local stations have in electronically scanning the strike zone is virtually flawless. Again, umpires are human and often are inconsistent when judging the strike zone.
Disputes eliminated
Technology is good, but not necessary for the age-old process of human beings making these calls. Let the batters and pitchers complain (gripes that replays often show are justified).
Where I think Major League Baseball is cheating the players and the fans is not using the available technology for reviewing disputed calls on the base paths.
I can’t tell you the number of times that instant replay on a television broadcast has shown that umpires made the wrong decision. The situation is epidemic and the problem cuts across both leagues.
Many other professional leagues, such as the NFL, the NBA and even the stodgy sport of tennis, use instant replay and there rarely are disputes over replayed calls. I fail to see why Commissioner Bud Selig is so opposed to trying to make his league more perfect.
One of the reasons he has given is that using replay will make the games — which now run a minimum of three hours — run even longer. So what, if technology helps make the games mistake free. The players and their fans deserve it.
Cape Coral resident Norman Marcus is a dedicated couch potato and author of “Inside Big Time Sports: Television, Money and the Fans.”