Instant Replay

As I mentioned, I caught last night's game on the radio, but there's a lot of buzz about an instant replay rule. Two questionable calls, one that ended the game and another that could have prevented extra innings in the first place, define the fate of the 2007 Padres and could have cost the Rockies their playoff run.

Two years ago the White Sox eked out a win against the Angels after an incorrect trapped-third-strike call, which tied the ALCS at 1 and pretty much popped the Angels' bubble for the rest of the series. Twenty years before that, Don Denkinger got hate mail and death threats for missing a call.

For all the ideas Bud Selig has taken from other sports, this is one where he really dropped the ball. They say nobody's perfect in baseball, and that includes umpires, but that's a copout. Unlike players' imperfections, those of the umpiring squad largely take place when the play is over. They're rulings that can be corrected to a high degree of accuracy with existing technology.

How many times have you seen a really good manager tirade, the kind where he really gets his money's worth after getting the ax, when the ump really did miss the call? In that amount of time, they could have checked the replay, made sure the call was correct, corrected it if it wasn't, and gone on with the game. You shouldn't lose a manager or player or coach for the rest of the game and the length of a suspension over a ruling that either is correct or it isn't.

You can mount a camera on a golf tee these days. Networks embed cameras in the infield as it is. Put cameras with fixed angles around the bases fair and foul, on the foul poles and along the walls. Put a video engineer in a monitor room to use the TV angles too. Put a dedicated replay umpire in one of the photo wells to call for different angles and show them to the crew chief. Done. Around MLB it would cost less per year than one halfway decent free agent.

Teams could even get sponsors for replays like they do with everything else. "This instant replay brought to you by Ralph's Syrup of Ipicac. When you need an instant replay, think of Ralph's."

There's just too much at stake. When you throw a $100,000,000 roster out there to try to yourself a World Series, you deserve correct rulings. Or, for that matter, if you're a fan who has to get cable to watch the playoffs. Or if you're among the thousands of bartenders, waiters and waitresses, cab drivers, hotel employees, merchandisers, etc., who can have a really good week if their team advances another round. All on the shoulders of four people when, again, nobody's perfect.