Baseball Instant Replay

The powers have already compromised our nation's game. World Series starting times have been pushed back to 8:30 EST and had this season's Series gone seven games, baseball would have played its first November date. With commercial breaks and other add-ons, one of the Red Sox-Rockies games took well over four hours (and it was only a nine inning affair!).

Mediocre utility players are receiving salaries in excess of two million a season, while super studs like Alex Rodriguez, are pushing the thirty million milestone. Organ music is being replaced by piped in rock and rap and sophisticated computerized scoreboards entertain with inane between innings contests and advertising that are virtually the same from one stadium to the next.

The good news is that owners are demanding baseball only parks and stadiums are becoming unique in their field dimensions and various quirks. Unfortunately, baseball's young set of general managers see this lack of uniformity as an opportunity to bring the next adjustment to the grand old game - instant replay.

The basic argument is that the seating arrangements and differing lengths and heights of outfield fences have made it very difficult for umpires to get homerun calls correctly. Even with six umpires in postseason, there was controversy on some possible long hits. So the GM's are pressing for baseball to get into the new millennium and institute replays for home runs. Perhaps with television cameras at every game this might be a good idea. Who would not want the correct call to be made?

But if instituted, where will it stop. Did a fan reach out and touch a bouncing ball for a ground rule double? Did a third baseman reach into the stands and actually hold on to the foul fly for an out? Did a pitched ball just hit the loose sleeve of the hitter? Did a runner actually go out of the base path?

Once in, it will always be there. Umpires will delay games and talk to league officials in some sealed off office in New York who are monitoring every play and every move of the umps. In football, it is obvious that officials know that if they make a close call, there will be backup so their call is no longer the final one. The official is given way to a nameless techie as the final arbiter of right and wrong.

Why do we love baseball so much? Because of its timeless nature and pastoral grandeur. There is a sense of good and evil and of a world that was once just a bit simpler and slower than what we are experiencing today. Put the instant replay in the game and baseball will lose its uniqueness and a bit of its soul.