Instant replay anyone?

In the past four days there have been three blown home run calls across the majors. As usual this random sorting of blown calls has sparked the media into a frenzy. ESPN panelists, radio talk shows, they all want a piece of the action, a good rant against the establishment of Major League Baseball. It seems that this time the MLB is listening, as they have proposed instituting instant replay on homerun calls in the Arizona Fall League this season, and possibly the World Baseball Classic next year.

How this supposed system would work isn’t yet clear. Either a field umpire will look at a monitor in one of the dugouts, or like in the NFL there may be an official in the press box who reviews the call from up in the sky. The bottom line is no matter the schematics, instant replay will be more accurate. A frame by frame view of the ball, zoomed in, will make the judgment on fair or foul, in or out, much easier then the naked eye. While I’ll be the first to admit some of those replays are non conclusive, the logical decision in terms of making sure the calls on the field are the most accurate, is to institute the system.

The question isn’t however if it will make it more accurate, many baseball purists think it will ruin the game. A lot of sports fans scoff at this, they take a look at what it has done for their football, hockey, and even basketball and they look at baseball fans like their stubborn grandparents. It’s the wave of the future, and many believe baseball is holding themselves out on what could be great. I think however that many of those crying for the change forget what made baseball great, and what keeps it great today.

Baseball more then any sport is symbolic of life. There are 162 games, and with it half a year of ups and downs, and successes and failures. Almost every team will win at least 60 games and lose at least 60 games, all that matters is the 40 in between. The baseball season, like life, is an in and out struggle that is never perfect. This is why we love baseball, why through the struggles of the 20’s and 30’s America was drawn to this game, and why it still holds our attention a century since its inception. Like life baseball will screw fans over sometimes; there will be strikes, bad decisions, let downs, and yes a bad call. But like life we learn to roll with the punches, we learn that our time will come and that even if it takes years, decades, and for the Cubs, centuries, everybody will have their day in the sun.

I was an Orioles fan in 1996, I was 9 years old. They were in the ALCS facing the mighty New York Yankees, but many thought the Orioles had what it took to make it to the World Series. In the eighth inning of game one with the O’s up 4-3, Derek Jeter hit what should have been a fly ball out to right field. Instead 13 year old Jeffery Maier reached out and grabbed the ball away from over the fence from Tony Torasco. The call was blown, it was a home run, and the rest was history. I was crushed, the replay clearly showed it was fan interference. The Orioles should have won.

Looking back 12 years later however, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Did the call kick my ass? Yes it did. But it taught me an invaluable lesson about fairness in life and baseball. Now its history, baseball lore, engrained in the tradition of the sport I love. Failure and heartbreak is part of this game, as much as the glory of victory.

In football, one mistake is so much more devastating. There are only 16 games, only 4 downs, every inch and every call counts so much more. In the NBA and the NHL the only reviewable plays are on buzzer beaters and pucks past the goal line. In both instances the human senses are just too poor to accurately make a call.

So it is my hope as a baseball fan that instant replay is not introduced into our game. I don’t think it will slow the game down, I don’t think it will hurt the umpires integrity either. But I also don’t think that it is necessary enough to take away an integral part of the experience of baseball. We love our famous stories of heroics in baseball, but what tradition would we have without the infamy?