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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > May > 23
Friday, May 23, 2008
Instant replay would strip baseball of its soul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No instant replay, please. Not in baseball, where breath-to-breath squabbles between umpires, managers, coaches and players are as much of the game’s soul as the seventh-inning stretch, the national anthem and a box of Cracker Jack.
Quick. How many blatantly wrong calls do you recall in baseball history? Before you answer, the last few days don’t count, because they were a fluke.
Even so, courtesy of back-to-back-to-back mistakes by umpires on flyballs beyond outfield walls since last Sunday, baseball is threatening to do something that it doesn’t need, and that is become the NFL, with a little instant-replay booth somewhere on the field, folks huddled over video monitors upstairs and confusion, period.
Before we continue, here’s another question, but this one goes specifically to Phil Niekro, who spent most of his 24 seasons as a Hall of Fame pitcher with the Braves. How many blatantly wrong calls do you recall during your career?
Niekro thought, before answering in a hurry, “You know, I probably can count them on one hand.”
After thinking some more, Niekro could count them on one finger. Once, the Braves played at New York’s Shea Stadium with no first-base umpire due to a sudden illness by somebody in the crew. A Mets player lofted a fly down the right-field line, and Niekro rushed from the mound to see the ball hook to the foul side of the pole. One of the umpires called the ball fair. “I got beat in the game on account of that,” said Niekro, 69, still perturbed by the moment after 21 years in retirement. “I got in that umpire’s face and called him every name that I’d learned since I was out of the Boy Scouts. He just said, ‘Hey, I had a 50-50 chance.’ What could I say?”
Niekro laughed, adding, “Umpires are human. They’re going to make mistakes, and one of the thrills of a ballgame or of a season is when an umpire maybe blows one, and it could have gone either way, and the fans are getting on him. Maybe in the playoffs or the World Series, they should have instant replay, but I don’t know. I’m not big on it.”
For good reason. With instant replay, there aren’t highlights for the ages of Ralph Houk, Billy Martin and Earl Weaver kicking dirt and slinging caps. With instant replay, there isn’t Bobby Cox adding to his record each week for ejections from a game. With instant replay, there aren’t blown-calls legends, ranging from Don Denkinger to Jeffrey Maier to Ken Burkhart.
That said, baseball’s general managers want instant replay. They voted 25-5 last autumn to use it on boundary calls, but the commissioner’s office historically has been against it. Then along came that overblown deal last Sunday at Yankee Stadium, where umpires reversed a correct call by saying a home run by the Mets’ Carlos Delgado was foul. The Mets were playing the crosstown Yankees, which always makes everything bigger than life. Worse, the game was on national television, which always makes everything even bigger than that.
The following night, umpires botched a call in Houston on Geovany Soto’s shot to the wall in left-center field at quirky Minute Maid Park. It actually was a home run for Soto, but the umpires couldn’t tell where the ball slammed into the wall near a home-run indicator. So they ruled that the ball was in play. Although Soto scored on what erroneously was called an inside-the-park home run, the instant-replay cries grew louder with that controversy and with the one two days later.
This time, umpires at Yankee Stadium didn’t see Alex Rodriquez slamming a pitch off the yellow staircase behind the fence for a home run. Instead, they thought the ball hit off the fence and back into play.
Now baseball executive Jimmie Lee Solomon is saying technology associated with instant reply will be tested in the Arizona Fall League this year.
After that, don’t ask.
It’s too scary to think about.
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