Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Replay a plus?

In case you missed it, MLB announced that instant replay will now be used only inn "boundary calls." And by boundary calls, we mean if a ball made it over the wall, whether a ball was fair or foul, and in determining fan interference. Sounds pretty good right? Of course it does. Even though it signals a changing of the guard for baseball, this technology will make the make sure that umpires will not be put in the impossible position of making calls that the human eye cannot judge. And while we may have to wait another minute or two for the call to correct, I would rather spend another couple minutes waiting for them to get it right rather than have a game decided on a bad call.

The detractor to replay will say "why did they put this in so late?" And that question has some undeniable validity to it. Why did this take so long? And what about the games in May and June that were decided by a bad call? Why couldn't we have had replay then?

I'm sad that baseball will no longer rely solely on the human element, which was part of the beauty of the game, but replay is a necessary evil. If you are skeptical about replay now, I ask you to simply give it time. This will make the game better and fairer.

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