MLB Instant Replay: It’s Time For Traditionalists To Accept The Bad With The Good

MLB Instant replay
MLB Instant replay
Mar 31 2014 Milwaukee WI USA Home plate umpire Ted Barret right and first base umpire Greg Gibson stops play to look at instant replay after a close call at first base was challenged in the sixth inning during game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves of an opening day baseball game at Miller Park Benny Sieu USA TODAY Sports

The hide-bound traditionalists who kept extensive baseball video replay from becoming a reality for years have to take their medicine this spring.

Kinks and quirks in the system are inevitable, as baseball’s lords projected. Stuff like reviews taking five minutes – a really pregnant pause in the action – and the right call being changed to the wrong one after New York took a look are bound to happen.

A veteran wag like Bruce Levine of AM 670 The Score in Chicago suggested the reviewers had propellers atop their heads after ruling the White Sox’s Adam Eaton dropped the ball on April 2 after holding onto it in his glove for two seconds after catching a fly ball in center. For 150 years that had always been a legal catch, but the reviewers may sometimes think too much and interpret too rigorously as they try to find their proper rhythm.

All in a good cause, though. Whatever mistakes might be made on video reviews pale in comparison to the travesty of bad calls for which there was no recourse, no Peter Ueberroth or Bud Selig using their “best interest of the game” commissioner’s powers.

Cardinals fans will always have an ache in their hearts over Don Denkinger’s blown call at first base in the 1985 World Series that boosted the Royals. Armando Galarraga will never be able to look back at a 2010 perfect game thwarted by a too-quick call by Jim Joyce at first base that Joyce immediately admitted was wrong.

No commissioner would dare anger the umpires or set precedent by changing the outcome. Forget about getting the call right by any means, including commissioner’s fiat. Some things are so egregious they demand the ultimate authority intervene. So, yeah, traditionalists must accept their penance when the umps are standing around near the dugout with headphones listening to Replay Central as players cool their heels on the field.

What I hear is a new spirit of cooperation between umpires and managers. A cagey skipper like the Twins’ Ron Gardenhire actually has been encouraged to go out after the seventh inning, beyond the limit where managers have a guaranteed replay challenge, to lobby the umpires to seek the replay truth themselves, as is legislated.

If as a side benefit, replays purge the increasing confrontational style of some umpires, so much the better. Country Joe West provoked a gentleman like Andre Dawson to empty a bat rack onto the field in 1991. He could hardly escape a series with Ozzie Guillen without a flareup. Good that West, in his umpiring dotage, and other amateur showmen are mandated to seek common ground with managers.

The replays also could mean better umpire training. Manager-turned-broadcaster Bob Brenly said the game has become too fast-paced for many umpires. One ump supervisor said “anticipation” issues, of the type Joyce displayed in the Galarraga game, needed attention.

And the wish is that the next innovation in baseball isn’t implemented as a result of a crisis, abject embarrassment or simply keeping up with the times. Replay is part of a long-line of changes, from integration to junking the reserve clause to semi-permanent labor peace, that began only when baseball was dragged kicking and screaming into the present or had a collective gun to its head from an angry public and Congress.

The game lagged far behind the other three major sports in the use of replay. Legendary referee Jerry Markbreit, now trainer of NFL officials, said two years ago baseball was 20 years behind the NFL. Only when fans talked more about blown calls than game action in the 2012 postseason did the powers move on expanded replay after offering stiff resistance, even with the Joyce-Galarraga fiasco fresh on their minds.

There are other issues that demand a proactive stance by whomever succeeds Selig. For once the game must get ahead of the curve, and not react via crisis management.

Marketing baseball against the colossus of the NFL is mandatory. Youth baseball leagues in affluent suburban areas are losing participants to soccer and computer-borne activities. The ennui among youth has spread beyond the inner cities. Charging exorbitant prices for tickets at a time when regional broadcast networks are showering billions on teams won’t regenerate the fan base.

If baseball prides itself on no time limit, then a few extra minutes to get it right via replay isn’t going to kill the rhythm. The business-side folks will sell more beer and hot dogs, you think, during such delays.

But the clock is ticking faster than anyone thinks on the next issues that are even more important than a perfecto-gone-away and an umpire’s apology.