It is now Time for instant replay
Forget about traditionalism in baseball. There has already been many changes ie; Lowering of the pitching mound; the DH, interleague play; winner of All Star game determining home field advantage for the World Series; smaller ball parks , etc.
We have now seen or heard of what I thought was a no brainer meaning when the ball is called Foul it's Foul. Yesterday MLB set a precident by reversing a Foul call to fair.
Ok what does all this mean.
If the umpires can take the time to meet as a group and change calls, then why not allow a coach to "challenge" ala football certain calls. The rule would probably have to be "tweaked" but for starters allow a coach 2 challenges per game. The tricky part would be determining what kind of penalty should the coach loose. In football a time out (which can be very valuable) is taken away.
ALL Sports even the individual sports (golf, tennis) now use replay. You say "Golf" but Golf has used replay before to assess penalty strokes to players.
Baseball needs to get out of the dark ages and use IR. Yesterdays call IMO was a very good case to use Replay.
One might say The game is already 3 hours and change long, but in reality when there is a controversial call, the manager will request Time and the umpires hudle and all this takes several minutes so why not use replay to begin with.
If the premise is "to get the call right" then why not use replay to "get the call right". IMO the MLB umpires association "got the ball" rolling by their recent actions.
Let's see what happens
Pete Booth
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Peter M. Booth
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