Time To Fix The Bad Calls

Its time to institute instant replay in baseball. The sheer ridiculousness of the missed call on Sunday Night Baseball's Yankees/Mets game has finally pushed me over the cliff on this.

I consider myself a traditionalist, though in truth I probably am not. I hate to admit that I like the DH*, inter-league play doesn't bother me (though I'm no fan of the uneven schedule), and tying home field advantage in the World Series to the All-Star game makes as much sense to me as alternating it, or for that matter, flipping a coin.

Baseball has a storied history of badly missed calls at historic moments. Just in my lifetime there was Don Denkinger's missed call in the 1985 World Series, Chuck Knoblach's phantom tag of Jose Offerman in the ALCS, and probably most famously, Derek Jeter's "home run" in the '96 ALCS that was stolen from Orioles outfielder's Tony Tarasco's glove by Yankee fan Jeffrey Maier. While all of these might be good stories, none of them are a credit to the sport. And instant replay could have fixed all of them. Easily.

But back to Sunday night. In case you weren't watching, with two runners on base, Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado hit a fly ball down the left field line at Yankee Stadium. It went over the wall and hit the bottom of the foul pole. That makes it fair, so three run homer. The third base umpire ruled it a home run, but home plate umpire (?) Bob Davidson** inexplicably overruled him, calling it foul. The non-homer homer took three runs off the board for the Mets, though ultimately it was only two runs as Delgado singled to drive in a run a few pitches later.

The real problem is that there is no excuse for this. None. Reply could have solved the problem in seconds.

Umpires: "We don't know. Lets check replay."
Replay: "Fair. Home run."
Umpires: "Home run."

There. Not much more to it than that. We're not talking about checking all balls and strikes. A simple policy that would get used like once a week tops would save embarrassing gaffs like Sunday night's (and the '85 Series, and the '96 ALCS, and...) from ever happening again. And that is a good thing.

* Not because I like the idea, but because I like the way it works out on the field.
** Said Davidson, "I fucked it up. I'm the one who thought it was a fucking foul ball. I saw it on the replay. I'm the one who fucked it up so you can put that in your paper." Classy guy.