Announcement from mbcrowder

[MD Longhorn]

I’d like to announce publicly that I will not be changing the tax rate for the country this year, and I will not change the NFL instant replay rule for 2010. Thank you.

What?

You say I don’t have the right or ability to change those things anyway? True, but that didn’t stop Bud Selig from announcing that he was not going to change Jim Joyce’s call at first base the other day, and make Galarraga’s game a Perfect Game. I have just as much right to change the country’s tax rate as Selig does to change an umpire’s call.

[Dakota]

Originally Posted by mbcrowder

...I have just as much right to change the country’s tax rate as Selig does to change an umpire’s call.

Maybe he does not have the right to do it, but from what I understand, he does have the authority to do it.

[greymule]

Obama has the authority to pardon Charles Manson, too.

[NCASAUmp]

I think he eventually will reverse the call, but it won't be this year. He doesn't want to set the precedent of reviewing plays within the same season.

[MD Longhorn]

I don’t think “best interests” is nearly as broad as you imply here. In the Cubs case, a judge ruled that the clause was “applicable only to internal baseball relationships between teams or between teams and players.” Even the current Texas Rangers situation is shaky regarding this clause – and if he invokes it, it will definitely go to court.

“Best interests” does not even apply (yet) to interactions between the league and umpires, Sandy Alderson notwithstanding.

Selig himself wrote, “the Best interests powers are inherently narrow and created to ensure the integrity of the game.”

Put it this way … Bud could not invoke Best Interests to enforce instant replay to allow for changes to umpires calls. He had to use collective bargaining to change the agreement between MLB and WUA. So how could Best Interests apply to this … which is essentially the same thing – using instant replay to change a call (however long after the fact)… the agreement is VERY specific about what calls can be reversed via replay, and one umpire nearly lost his job over going outside the bounds of that agreement.

[Dakota]

MLB administration has already reversed an umpire's call, albeit it was the American League President, not the Commissioner, and it was not a pure out/safe judgment call - even though the OUT ruling made by McClelland was reversed (pine tar game).

Given that the impact of this rule reversal would be only historical stats, and not the outcome of the game, it seems it would be within the "ensure the integrity of the game" powers. And, besides, for a ruling by the pretend commissioner to be challenged, someone would have to challenge it, and no one would, so the ruling would stand.

Fay Vincent, in a radio interview on the issue, stated that the Commissioner probably does have this power (he left some wiggle room), but also that the Commissioner should not exercise it due to the precedent it would set.

I think the precedent would be horrible if the commissioner were to step in and reverse a pure judgment call.

However, given that the people in charge of official statistics have already changed many historical stats regarding such things as no hit games and such, the best way to handle this is to make it officially recognized as a perfect game, but let the umpire's call officially stand.

[MD Longhorn]

Well, it was not an umpire's CALL that was overturned in the Pine Tar incident, but rather the interpretation of the rule. Not only that, the interp was protested correctly at the time by the other team - whereupon the protest was ruled on.

Judgement calls can't be protested, obviously. There's no reason for this call to go anywhere - no other calls do.

I agree that precedent would be awful if they did reverse this, but that wasn't the initial intent of my post. I can't imagine reversing a judgement call to accomodate what is essentially a novelty statistic, when reversing a call that changes the outcome of a game is never even considered.

[IRISHMAFIA]

If you haven't learned by now that the puppet is only going to do what the puppeteer pulling the strings tells him to do, you haven't been paying very close attention to the last couple of decades of MLB.