With the 2013 Major League Baseball season now officially over, baseball fans will once again have to face the long, cold winter without their beloved boys of summer. However, when fans tune in next spring, they may be watching a vastly different game.
Instant replay is another step closer to changing the game forever, thanks to the endorsement of the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig, and 75 percent of major league team owners. Selig has apparently rethought his staunch anti-replay position and is set to introduce the measure in January, pending the approval of unions representing umpires and players.
Almost every decision on the field is likely to be subject to review under the new system except for balls, strikes, check swings and foul tip calls. Managers will be allowed one challenge over the first six innings of a game and two from the seventh inning until the completion of the game. Calls that are challenged will be reviewed by a crew in MLB headquarters in New York City, which will send its ruling back to the ballpark.
While the details of instant replay are to be ironed out in the coming months, a larger question looms over the issue: Should Major League Baseball introduce instant replay in the first place?
Although instant replay would certainly mean big changes for America’s pastime, those changes would be for the better. Any avid baseball fan like myself can recall many instances where the umpires have gotten a call horribly wrong. Sometimes these blown calls work themselves out later in the inning and are forgotten. But far too many calls have drastically affected the outcome of a game and are remembered long after the game is over. Perhaps the most infamous blown call within the last few years took place on June 2, 2010 in a game between the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians. The Tiger’s pitcher, Armando Galarraga, was one out away from a perfect game when it was snatched away from him by a clearly blown call by the first base umpire, Jim Joyce. Although Joyce apologized immediately and was ultimately forgiven by Galarraga, the incident must be taken at face value; a pitcher was robbed of a perfect game.
While instant replay is certainly a step in the right direction for Major League Baseball, the proposed system is not the best option. The challenge system does not always work well in the NFL, and it is certainly not the best system for the MLB. Challenge plays in the NFL make the game significantly longer, something that the MLB cannot afford as many people already complain about the length of baseball games without review. In addition, MLB managers could potentially abuse the system and use challenges simply to disrupt a pitcher’s rhythm, or to give a relief pitcher more time to warm up in the bullpen.
Rather than introduce this flawed system that gives a manager the power to arbitrarily disrupt the flow of the game, Major League Baseball should introduce a system similar to the one in place in the NCAA. In this system, an extra official reviews each play from the broadcast booth and radios down to the officials on the field if he or she detects an error. This system would be good for baseball because it would eliminate the problems of blown calls while preventing managers from strategically using their challenges at the same time. This system addresses the fact that human error is a controllable part of the game without giving managers the authority to undermine umpires.
Instant replay is not “an attack on the game,” as many of its opponents view it. Rather, it is an attempt to improve the game by ensuring that a history-making effort cannot be ruined by human error.