Don’t take bad calls out of game

Abner Doubleday would turn over in his grave if he knew the perversions being planned for his grand ole game as the major leagues are considering adding instant delay, I mean instant replay, to further slow, I mean, improve the game.
By a vote of 25-5 the team owners voted to try out instant replay on line calls of foul and fair, something which was supposed to begin next year at the All-star Game but may instead be used on the diamond by this August due to a rash of high profile blown calls. The try out is experimental and would not yet extend to plays at the plate, bam-bam plays at first or other parts of the game such as strikes and balls.
The whole idea of replay in baseball surprises me as most baseball purists are almost Rainman-ish about their loyalty to tradition when it comes to the sport. Its hallowed Hall of Fame won’t let the evil Pete Rose in and its dedication to statistics can practically tell you if players are wearing boxers or briefs. Yet, now they want to part with tradition and bring replay into the mix.
I’ve got a couple of serious problems with the idea. First, who do we hate? We’ve always hated the umpire. If we take responsibility out of his hands and put it in the cold computer heart of replay, there’s no one to hate. An umpire’s fallibility is as much a part of the game as peanuts and Cracker Jacks. We are still talking about the blown call at first by the ump in the Cardinals-Royals World Series and that was over 20 years ago. That bad call is just as steeped in baseball tradition as Kurt Gibson’s shot which lifted the Dodgers to victory or Bill Buckner’s blown catch behind first in their series with the Mets. It’s part of tradition for the manager to argue with the ump, maybe kick a little dirt on his shoes before being tossed. If we have to wait for an appeal to big brother, with the manager running to the replay official like a sissy running to his mommy, then that part of the game is gone forever.
And what good will foul and fair do if the ball is called foul on the field by the umpire? The runners, who would have advanced on a fair ball, are still stuck where they were. And as for those homerun calls which have been blown, the best way to stop that is more defined boundaries, as ballparks nowadays have facades in the outfield more akin to a casino on the Vegas strip than a baseball field.
However, my biggest problem with replay is that the game is already slow enough. All replay will do is add length to a game which is an hour too long already. All you have to do is look at instant replay in professional football to see how it kills the flow of the game. Every time there’s a fumble in football you can bet your bottom dollar we are going to have a time-out while the ref sticks his head under the hood to look at his peep show. Sure, the limit is supposed to be two minutes but it seems like two hours sometimes.
And, the excitement of the turnover is killed by the waiting period until it is upheld or reversed.
Football has had years to tweak its system yet replay still hampers the flow of the game, and in the end, maybe a handful of games in all those years have been swayed one way or another by replay. Baseball will be the same way as you can bet they will extend replay to other areas like close plays at the bases and especially the calls at home. How long will it be before we have a computer calling balls and strikes, sending all umpires to the unemployment line because of their fallibility? Frankly I don’t want HAL 2000 behind the plate.