Just Say No!
I can’t help that the entire MLB operation is run by a bunch of empty-headed attention whores. Or that every attempt to promote the sport has fallen flat on it’s face. Or that the game is so slow (and it gets slower each year) that people are turning away from the sport because they can’t enjoy something for that long of a period of time.
Over the past decade and a half, the big shots for Major League Baseball have brainstormed to find ways to draw fans back to the game. Fans are losing interest for one reason or another; whether it’s the steroids scandal, the high numbers of foreign players being filtered in to replace the sub-par talent that our own country is producing to support our own past-time, or the fact that baseball has become quite possibly the slowest sport on the face of the earth.
And please disregard chess. I don’t need any snide comments.
Recently, in two Yankees games, calls have been made by umpires that have taken away home runs from the Yanks. The first call said that a shot to left field went foul when clearly it was a fair ball that should have been counted as a run. The second time, just yesterday, a ball bounced off of a stairway located just a few feet behind the outfield fence. The ball caromed back into play and the umpires claimed that it had hit the top of the fence and was not a home run.
So of course there was outrage. The horror of it all for these umpires to make human mistakes is just inexcusable. They need to go to the optometrist. They need to get laser surgery. They need to eat more carrots.
Damn lazy umpires.
The fact is, when was the last time a terrible call was made where runs were taken away that ended up affecting a game so much that the team that should have won actually lost. Even the Jeffrey Maier incident back in 1997 wasn’t a deal breaker. But all of a sudden, because two mistakes are made so close in time to one another that there is this huge call for instant replay in baseball.
Are you kidding me? That’s like asking for the death penalty instead of 20 years with parole.
Let’s not jump to extremes here, Bud Selig. There are several reasons why instant replay works in other sports and will absolutely, no questions asked NOT work in baseball. Use your brain, sir, and you’ll figure out that your attempts to revive the sport will be suffocated if you introduce the ability for umpires to review even a small list of plays throughout the game.
For one, your biggest push this past week has been to urge the umpires to enforce time limits on break time between pitches. You practically have “ol’ blue” pushing hitters into the batters’ box and yelling out to the mound for some of these guys to throw the ball. 12 seconds between pitches, you say. And only 20 seconds when there are men on base. You claim this will speed the game up; a game that has seen average playing time increase over 5 minutes in the past 4 years will become quicker, thus more intriguing, because all 9 guys in the lineup are being shoved forward when it comes time for them to bat.
So let me ask this question: Exactly how will instating replay speed the game up? I can answer it for you quite easily.
IT WON’T.
In fact, by allowing instant replay to become part of the game of baseball will only counteract your efforts to make the game more enjoyable by causing it to move faster. It will become an enemy of your campaign to prove to America that you really aren’t as incompetent as perceived. Your spur-of-the-moment antics to sweep the dust out of the dirty corners of the game to make it more presentable will come across as just that- nit-picky and time wasting.
I do have a solution, however, to your “time problem”. You can call me later to thank me when you finally discover that the reason the game has slowed down so much is because of the introduction and gradually overwhelming amount of sponsorship and media. Not only are TV breaks between half innings continuing to get longer and longer, teams have no limit to how many promotions and spectacles they can run in order to draw a dollar or two. If you instate a limit on that side of the game, perhaps you would find that games won’t take as long to play. It’s not like the players need all that time to prepare. That’s what batting practice is for.
But I digress.
There are other problems with installing instant replay. The notion now is that I.R. (you like that? it’s street for “Instant Replay”. Let people know you saw it here first) will only be used for home runs. It will only be used to argue (or prove) that a ball did in fact clear the fence, or in the Yankees case, that the ball did in fact bounce off the random yellow painted staircase dreadfully placed only feet from the playing field, and not off the top of the outfield wall.
But where exactly is the line drawn? How do you prevent something like this from becoming a slippery slope? Sooner or later, something is going to happen where there is a call for replay to be used.
But replay is only used for home runs… duh!
God forbid a ball is trapped under an outfielders glove but it’s called an out and the runner on 3rd base can’t score the winning run in the bottom of the 9th in game 7 of the World Series. And so people riot and cars are flipped and burned and police brutality gets called into question and the court systems don’t know what to do and entire cities fall into shambles. All because of instant replay. Don’t you understand the terrible consequences?
Wait, if instant replay is around, people will learn not to care. Sorry, I forgot.
Most sports who have instant replay have gone about it the right way, discussing it for a long period of time and figuring out the quirks that come with the package (minus the NHL). Baseball is talking about installing this system not even a business week’s worth of time after the initial play occurred that called into question in the first place. Honestly, how much can one professional league overreact?
The MLB focuses so much point on allowing it’s pitchers to warm up so that they don’t end up injuring themselves in the heat of battle. Relief pitchers are allowed a huge amount of time to warm up when they enter the game, all for the safety of the game more than anything else. Won’t instant replay counter that factor as well?
An opposing pitcher may find himself sitting in the dugout, waiting for the verdict of ONE PLAY. It’s more time spent sitting, not moving, then he should. Some innings can end up lasting longer than opposing players wish because they find themselves getting cold and their muscles getting tight while waiting. Once again, an operation that will only add time onto the length of the game, both short term (the time from the controversial play to the time it’s figured out) and long term (the addition of time to the length of the game while we all waited for some stupid decision to be made), is only going to cause more harm to a game that is struggling to regain it’s reputation.
Bud Selig, maybe you should take a long hard look at this issue in the winter meetings that will take place after the season. There is no place for this issue to be thought about at the end of May. The types of plays that require instant replay are few and far between and, quite frankly, the sacrifice it will take on the game is suicidal.
Tags: Add new tag, America's pasttime, Baseball, bud selig, home run, instant replay, jeffrey Maier, MLB, New York Yankees, problems, slowest sport, umpires
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