Thoughts on MLB Instant Replay
In yet another move towards the complete NFL-ization of Major League Baseball, we now have Instant Replay to aid the umpiring of home runs in our national pastime. In last night’s Yankees-Rays matchup at Tropicana Field, the technology was used for the first time in Major League history. It took the umpiring crew a little over 2 minutes to confirm that Alex Rodriguez’s towering left field blast was indeed his 549th career home run.
According to the opinion of MLB executive Jimmie Lee Solomon, the emergence of instant replay is akin to the second coming of Christ: “It was flawless. Everything went the way it was supposed to go.” Hell, even the Rays, the guys who were on the wrong end of the call in question, were singing the praises of baseball’s newest wrinkle.
Now, I’m not some crotchety purist, pining for the days of sepia-toned baseball cards and wool uniforms. There are zero Norman Rockwell paintings hanging in my domicile, and I freely acknowledge that Randy Johnson threw harder than Smokey Joe Wood. However, I’m not sure instant replay is good for baseball.
1) One of the biggest reasons baseball is losing young fans to other sports in the slow pace of the game. Last night, the instant replay process lasted 2 minutes and 15 seconds, and that is not counting the discussion time before the process, nor does it include the time it took for the players to settle in and resume play after the final decision had been made. You could argue that the process tacked roughly 5 minutes onto the total length of the game. While 5 minutes doesn’t seem like an eternity on paper, it certainly won’t help the image of a sport which is often criticized for its grating periods of inactivity.
2) This will come off as sophomoric and idiotic (and perhaps it is), but I really do enjoy watching managers and umpires argue. I wanted Joe Maddon to make a spectacle of himself on the field, with his Dennis Hopper mug and his coke bottle glasses. I wanted the umpire to calmly observe Maddon’s crazy rant for 30 seconds, and once Maddon utters one of the “Magic Words”, give the crowd a WWF-like exaggerated arm motion and scream “YOU’RRRRRRRE OUTTA HERE!”. It would have amused me, plain and simple. Isn’t that our primary goal when we tune into baseball games? To be amused? To have some God forsaken robot become the final arbiter between the managers and the men in blue, well…that just sucks the spirit right out of arguments.
You know what? While reading over my two reasons above, I now recognize and admit that #2 concerns me much more than #1, which makes my entire stance pretty trivial and weak. In other words, maybe this is just a purist ranting. In the end, I’m just another guy in the bleachers, covered in peanut shells and kicking around my 6 empty plastic cups. I appreciate the umpires “getting it right”, but I also enjoy watching explosions from time to time.
Sue me.
The time wasted for #2 is probably longer than that for #1 so I don’t the game delay is a good argument.
I agree that it takes some of the fun out of the game (look what instant replay has done to tennis and the good old McEnroe tirades) but the goal is a fairly-called game. If instant reply can do that it needs to stay.