In the Race
Now, here, you see, it takes all the blogging I can do to keep in the same place.
If I want to get somewhere else, I must blog twice as fast as that!
You see, I'm in
the Red Queen's Race...
I Wonder What Babe Ruth Or Roy Campanella Would Have To Say About It?
By Janet Evans
Wednesday, Aug 27 2008, 11:47 AM
Major League Baseball changes as we know it tomorrow.
It’s called Instant Replay….
Granted, it will be used on a limited basis, and that’s a good thing.
Baseball is not quite the same as other sports that use instant replay.
The umpire is making his call at the plate.
And yes, he has made some bad calls.
What’s a baseball game without a few boos and catcalls aimed at the ump, anyway?
It’s the American way at a baseball game…as American as apple pie.
The Boston Globe’s Nick Carardo has this to say…
“An old major league umpire friend feels that, with instant replay off and running in Major League Baseball as of tomorrow, momentum will mount so that everything in dispute eventually is reviewed. He thinks that once this thing starts, it's going to be a runaway freight train. The first time a bad call is made in a World Series game on a bang-bang play at the plate, what do you think will happen?
Manager X will cry, "We have the technology; why didn't we review it and get the call right?"
And he'd be correct.
It's like saying we have a cure for the common cold, but we're only going to use part of it on sniffles. Coughs and sore throats will not be cured. Fact of the matter is, none of this should have been introduced in the first place. Have umpires done that poor a job in the history of baseball that we have to introduce technology to do part of their jobs? And why does it have to be introduced in late August? Was there a hue and cry for replay that I missed somewhere?”
With the announcement by commissioner Bud Selig yesterday that a replay system will be implemented - for "boundary calls" only - all of a sudden the game is dramatically changing with a little more than a month of the regular season left.
Technology is a wonderful thing, but not all aspects of life and sport are better off with it.Pretty soon robots will replace umpires.
The ball will have a device in it that beeps when it's thrown out of the strike zone. The strike zone will be defined by lasers that paint a box for the pitcher. Runners will have tracking devices on their uniforms to detect whether they've reached the base before the ball.
There are all sorts of possibilities, I suppose. But before this technology was introduced, those crazy things weren't remotely possible. Now who knows?”
Me?
I’m still miffed about instant replay being allowed in the Little League World Series, whether it was used or not.
I don’t want to see it in Major League Baseball.
But I’m not the one making the calls.
Read the Boston Globe article HERE
