Major League Baseball has defined the instances where instant replay review will come into play this summer. As if their game wasn't long enough already, they've officially taken us a full step down the slippery slope to sports abyss.
Now we'll see managers challenge ball-strike counts to allow their pitchers time to warm up, or to force a rain-delay call. We'll see the flow of a game being disrupted as often as it is in football, except that the flow of a game for a baseball pitcher is more critical than for any position player of any other major sport. We'll see umpires calling close plays differently so that they'll be reviewed.
We'll see a future where instead of reviewing isolated cases the way it is now, EVERY close home run will be reviewed, much like every scoring play in football/hockey. Every ball that bounces on, near or over the foul lines will be called into question. Every fielder or ball going into the stands will be scrutinized, every close call at first will require a convention of umpires viewing several angles of the play. Every game will be turned into a four-to-five-hour mess.
All because a friendly, century-old game played by human beings—where no two playing surfaces are the same, where errors are statistically significant and where blown calls are as much a part of the game as poor managerial decisions—has decided to turn itself into an exact science.
What disturbs me is not the list of reviewable situations announced by the MLB. The danger lies in what's not being said. The "hey, we have the technology, so why not?" argument will soon apply to any and every close play. This isn't merely reversing the odd circumstance where, for example, seven umpires all happened to miss an outfielder short-hopping a fly ball in the divisional playoffs. Soon every diving catch will be reviewed, while we wring our hands and ask ourselves if the shortstop completed the process. Think of all the diving catches that go on each day in the majors. Think of every instance of a batter beating the throw to first. "Hey, we have the technology, why not review it?"
We'll hear the things they say during the four-hour marathon football games, things like "who cares how long it takes, as long as they get it right." Mind you, this is a sport that willingly accepts the artificially swollen stats of a decade of knuckle-dragging steroid-enhanced freaks. A league whose owner gleefully accepted a tie in its All-Star Game. A sport who acknowledges the 1970 Orioles and 1985 Royals and other teams who won their championships because of blatantly missed calls. Because baseball is baseball, no Detroit Tiger pitcher has officially thrown a perfect game. We don't like it but we accepted it as fans of the game. Hell the pitcher himself accepted it. Because it's baseball.
But now suddenly, a century's worth of human mistakes are deemed unacceptable. Just watch. With this as its gateway, soon balls and strikes will be electronically determined, since they can be just as clearly measured with third millennium technology. Watching an entire game will test the limits of a fan's endurance. So the numbers will dip, baseball will conclude that more excitement needs to be added, and soon more idiot rules will be adopted to drive up the run totals.
Forget the manager challanges. Where's the flag I get to throw?
