Replay is right move for baseball

Matt Dischinger

Published Saturday, July 12, 2008

As Major League Baseball moves toward implementing instant replay on home-run calls, it’s obvious we are nowhere near rounding the bases on this issue.

The move to instant replay on home runs carries the same air of inevitability as Hillary Clinton’s once certain Democratic nomination. But if there’s anything the sports world could learn from politics, it’s that nothing is over until it’s over (unless Tiger has a lead on Sunday, but that’s another story).

The issue of instant replay in baseball has been talked about for some time, but it didn’t pop up as a real possibility until last week. It’s managed to fly under the radar without any moral implications, but the army of so-called “baseball purists” will soon begin dismantling another perceived threat to America’s pastime.

These are the same people that said the designated hitter would eliminate all strategy from baseball and that interleague play would be unfair to the hallowed National League. Meanwhile, attendance and viewership are at an all-time high despite the steroid shroud and the lack of a consensus superstar at the level of Tiger Woods, Sidney Crosby or LeBron James.

So, despite what the said purists will whine about in the coming days and weeks, instant replay on home runs will not ruin baseball. In fact, it’s the best idea since the splitfinger fastball.

If there’s one area of officiating that baseball needs to get right, it’s home runs. It’s not the variable strike zones that tend to be specific to each umpire, or certain umpires’ tendencies not to call strike three — it’s a run on the board. It’s the difference between going home and playing extra innings.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to the 1996 American League Divisional Series. The Orioles traveled to New York to take on the heavily favored Yankees, but surprised the Bronx Bombers and led 4-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning of game one.

Derek Jeter hit a fly ball to deep right field, and the since notorious Yankees fan Jeffrey Maier reached over the fence and turned it into a game-tying home run. The Yankees later won the game when Bernie Williams hit a walk-off homer.

The Yankees went on to win that series, 4-1, but the value of a game-one win cannot be overstated. The likelihood of winning a series is statistically diminished with a game-one loss. Conversely, it is statistically enhanced with a game-one win.

The win was tainted by a bad call, when instant replay would have showed Maier reaching in front of Baltimore outfielder Tony Torasco and pulling the ball into the stands. This is not an issue of baseball purity — it’s a matter of fixing a problem.

With baseball’s history of problem solving, the higher ups should embrace the clarity of this solution.