From Rob Drake, professional umpire. Please Read!

[Interested Ump]

Originally Posted by RobDrake

As far as technology goes, we will have instant replay soon. It will be mostly in the playoffs. I don't see it coming to the regular season for a little while. It is just hard to set up all the technology in every park, for every game. We will have it soon, though. I have no problem with it, because it proves how we are right most of the time.

I would agree. The greatest value of replay is the ability to see calls which might be blocked.

[quote]I don't think you will have replay on safes and outs, but I think we will have it on fair/fouls and fan interference. The way the ballparks are built these days, the ground rules are incredibly difficult sometimes.[/quote)

These would be good examples of excellent use of replay. I am not the least bit interested in B/S calls, for instance, but I would be interested in cacth-no catch calls.

Others argue that c-noc calls disrupt the placement of runners, I would limit replay to c-noc to 2 out only. If you have a signalled no catch, on review you have a reversal to a catch, you have an ended inning, no runs score. If you have a no-catch call with 2 outs, then it is reversed, then no runs score, end of inning. Thses would be major improvements in game accuracy.

Fair-foul would work only if a fair ball is adjudicated foul on replay, reset the runners. This is a major change, Rob, think of it. If there are runnes moving 2 or 3 bases, then have to reset, including the B-R, wow, there might need to be a commercial or six before everyone returned and caught their breath.

WJR, these are great questions that are exactly what we need on theumpirelife.com message board. Please feel free to post there, becuase I usually do not follow the happenings on this message board. I am on it tonight, because I wanted to let everyone know about the new site.
Thanks again,
Rob

Rob, appreciate the offer but I check in here just often enough to rankle the Old Guard, post my opinions for the archives and pick up a few pointers now and then.