Another look at the instant replay
Other than Joel Pineiro outdueling the Royals’ Kyle Davies (67-61 FIGS) in his second-best start of the season, the Cardinals’ 2-1 loss Tuesday gave us little to get excited about, what with the lack of offense (seven total bases and a mere 1.7 runs created). Little, that is, other than the Fan Question of the Day at the ballpark: "Do you support instant replay in baseball?"
(Before we provide our thoughts on the matter, indulge a revelation of this one peccadillo: public opinion polls masquerading as some kind of hand of justice. We live in a constitutional republic, so whether or not a majority of fans think that Cub fans should be locked up — for the record, we don’t — it’s wrong to do so. Whether to use the instant replay in baseball shouldn’t be a matter of public opinion. It’s a matter of doing what’s right.)
Lots of fans and talking/writing heads love the idea of instant replay in baseball. Some claims are true ("Everyone else is doing it," "It will get the play right"), while some are dubious ("It will speed up the games"). But like any possible solution to something that may be a problem, it’s easier to think of the benefit than envision unintended bad consequences (think Wild Card and interleague play). It’s not unlike that classic economic example, the "The Broken Window," in which observers assure a shopkeeper that his newly broken window is actually a good thing because it gives the glazier business: The flaw is that the observers don’t view the economy as a whole. The destruction of the window does, in fact, create some visible economic activity, but you cannot see what activity you would have had without the destruction.
Ditto instant replay. One of the unique historical attractions of baseball — whether people realize it or can articulate it — is its natural element, its ethos of simplicity of design and equipment: It’s played by people of any age and size (MLB, for instance, has the greatest diversity of age and body size of any of the major pro sports), in any field, with little more than a wooden bat and a leather ball.
So in this light, the problem of instant replay becomes not so much a question of "removing the human element" from baseball, but, rather, adding a non-human one. Aesthetically, the sport is self-contained and natural, and requiring a layer of technology destroys that. The very rules of the game would be changed, and yet most places where baseball is played would not be able to play by the new technology-requiring rules, effectively creating a separate set of rules (and you thought the DH was bad). People should be able to play a baseball game with the most nominal accoutrements — and not a replay monitor and camcorder.
The irony of the latest hullabaloo for introducing the use of instant replay is that it is based on the most tenuous example for needing instant replay. As readers may recall, the debate was rekindled by a string of hard-to-rule home runs last month:
- Sun May 18 Carlos Delgado
- Mon May 19 Geovany Soto
- Wed May 21 Alex Rodriguez
- Fri May 23 Ben Francisco
In all four cases, the problem would’ve been averted if the design of the ballpark were improved to clearly distinguish home runs from foul balls and balls in play (watch the videos for yourself). For instance, the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez lost a home run when umpires decided the ball hit the fence. Replays showed it glanced off a yellow staircase behind the fence. This requires not the sophistry of why MLB doesn’t use instant replay but begs the common-sense question of why anyone would design a park such that a staircase could interfere with the visibility of a home run. At the very least, fans deserve to be able to easily know when important plays — like home runs — occur, and bad park design robs them of that. In the already-ridiculous Minute Maid Park, the outfield wall is reminiscent of a wiffle-ball setup, with nothing but masking tape delineating a home run from in-play. Major League Baseball could implement an instant-replay review sideshow to fix this. Or they could simply require better ballpark field design. It’s not that hard (or, as is likely as important to MLB, costly). See Wrigley Field: Its wire basket not only keeps inebriated fans from falling onto the playing field but provides a visible, unambiguous indicator for home runs.
We’re not convinced that blown calls are a big-enough problem in baseball as to require a fundamental change to the game’s core aesthetics. Does anyone seriously think that the century-plus history of the sport is plagued by unworthy champions and phony statistics because it’s lacked the enlightenment of instant replay? People who are that concerned with the right team winning should be much more outraged by the wild card, the imbalanced schedule due to interleague play and the multi-tiered playoff system (and with the division championship series being only best of five games). But, like the shopkeeper’s friends, these observers are too myopically focused on the short-term and fail to see the bigger picture. Instant replay may yield some minor gains, true. But will anyone think about what has been lost?
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I’m sorry but I couldn’t disagree with you more.
Where our views fundamentally differ is that I don’t see replay as diminishing the “human element” of the game at all; it is simply an aid to the human umpires, just like a myriad of other things. Saying that replay is taking away from human decisions is like saying the glasses and contacts the umpires wear are taking away from the fundamental humanity of the game because they introduce a technological element.
Nobody is asking for robots to call the plays, or even to have a say. We are talking about a human umpire making a human call using the best available evidence….which includes a (gasp) television replay.
Honestly, I just do not understand those holding your position on this issue; why is there such opposition to getting calls correct? I’m sorry, but the human element of the players playing the game is much more important to me than the umpires. The umpires have one job: get calls right. Why not help them with existing and easily used technology? I just don’t get it.
As to those in other countries playing the game, they are not playing by different rules at all. The entire game is exactly the same except for the fact that the umpires cannot review their calls on a monitor. Nothing of significance is any different, and the players play the exact same way, so it’s really a non-issue. When many play the game, they don’t even have umpires at all; does that negatively effect the game as a whole? No.
As for those other perceived problems, you are simply displacing blame and shifting the issue. If you focus just on the issue of replay, you are making the decision on whether or not to get calls right. Are you telling me that you would honestly not go back and institute replay for the Don Denkinger call if you could? That is a clear cut example of the entire history of the game being directly changed by a bad call. That year there was, in fact, an unworthy champion, and we see calls like that effect the outcome of games constantly. Who knows what would be different had those calls been correct? The history of championships could be completely altered. Why let that occur at all? What is the problem with getting the calls correct?
I simply want games to be decided by the players on the field, not a failed call. Whats more human than that? To me, replay makes the game lose nothing a gain much.