Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The suggestion that baseball should and may use instant replay gets no vote here, nor anywhere Colorado Rockies fans gather.
Had replay been binding when Matt Holliday belly-flopped into Rockies legend against San Diego, maybe there would have been no Rocktober, no pennant, no World Series.
Amid the dust and noise and eager disbelief, umpire Tim McClelland managed to see that Holliday was not tagged because catcher Michael Barrett dropped the ball. Still, Holliday did not touch the plate.
How crushing, how painful, how distressing, how hold-on- and-stop-hugging-each-other devastating it would have been had everything stopped while replays were examined, the whole thing reversed and the single most memorable play in the short history of Rockies baseball purged as if it had never happened.
The umpire might have been wrong, but not on purpose, and a wonderful piece of baseball lore would be missing, even so in San Diego, where the cry of “We wuz robbed” will echo forever.
Baseball has threatened replay before, or promised to look into it seriously.
A couple of blown calls on home runs in Yankee Stadium recently have raised the volume again and baseball plans to test the thing in the Arizona Fall League, a place where, of course, no call really matters.
This is happening at the same time that the commissioner is moaning about games being too long, and Bud Selig is on record as being against instant replay. And steroids, of course.
Adding reviews for fair or foul balls, for home runs, for close plays will not shorten games nor make them any more entertaining. Nothing is more fun than watching grown men scream and kick dirt at each other.
One of the legendary moments in baseball was George Brett going nuts after a home run against the Yankees when Billy Martin rightly pointed out that he had too much pine tar too far up on his bat.
Would we rather have Carlton Fisk standing at home plate waving the ball fair in Fenway Park or just have him wait with the rest of us until the camera shows which it is?
Let us not throw the baby out with the pine tar.
Almost all other sports have instant replay, even cricket and rodeo, and in tennis there is a system so accurate on line calls it could be used to call balls and strikes very easily and eliminate human error altogether.
Part of the flavor of the game is knowing an umpire’s tendencies, and while a consistent strike zone might be ideal, it is boring.
(Baseball has used a QuesTec system to rate its umpires on how they call balls and strikes. Curt Schilling famously showed what he thinks of technology butting into baseball by taking a bat to one of the cameras.)
Derek Jeter once got a home run he should not have when a young fan reached out and caught a ball that was not going over the wall.
Another legend born. Tags have been made with the glove while the ball was in the bare hand, and allowed. Wonderful stuff.
Don Denkinger made the most famous botched call in any World Series when he called Kansas City’s Jorge Orta safe and cameras showed he was clearly out, a call that let the Royals stay in the 1985 Series against St. Louis and win it eventually for their only title.
Not many votes for instant replay will come from that side of Missouri.
The demand to get everything exactly right is dehumanizing, and, more particularly, no fun.
Nothing is duller than a referee with his head hidden under a flap, trying to figure out a football play, though the NFL’s challenge system — will the coach throw the red flag or not? — has a slight entertainment value.
The NBA more or less limits replay to crucial end-of-the-game plays — did a shot beat the buzzer, was it a three or a two? — but it is also considering a challenge system, too, that can be used during the game. We’ll see how that works in the middle of a fast break.
And, one more thing, going back to the Rockies: If the umpires had gotten the call right on Garrett Atkins’ disallowed home run earlier against the Padres, there would have been no Holliday sliding face first at home innings later anyhow.
What instant replay giveth cannot be made up in what it taketh away.
XLincicome is a columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. Email him at lincicomeb(at)rockymountainnews.com.