The Extention of Instant Replay in MLB

This has been a memorable year for mayor league baseball fans. The conference races are very tight and the playoffs are now right around the corner. I’ve been watching baseball for over ten years now, but if you ask me about the history of the game, I don’t know much. However, I do know that baseball is team sport and at the end of the game, what matters most is getting the win. On the other end, so much has changed from then to now and statistics and records are becoming more interesting. Technology is just becoming more advanced and because of that, some say instant replay should be added to major league baseball.
As I mentioned earlier, this has been a memorable year for MLB fans, but it isn’t because of conference races between teams; it has more to do with the success pitchers have had this year. There are 2430 games played in one season and baseball has been around for over one hundred years. Before this season, 18 perfect games have been pitch, but this year two were pitched less than half way through the season. Despite two perfect games being pitched in one season, what people will remember more about the 2010 MLB season is the game that should have been a perfect game, but wasn’t.
Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was sitting batter after batter down against the Cleveland Indians. With one player left to bat in the top of the ninth inning, batter Jason Donald hit a soft grounder towards first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who fielded the ball cleanly. Cabrera tossed it to pitcher Galarraga, who was over to cover first base; everyone seemed to think he was out. Tiger players and fans began to celebrate for a slight second until the first base umpire, Jim Joyce, made a safe call. Everyone in the stadium dropped to complete silence. Jim Joyce clearly blew the call and the suppose to be perfect game ended up being a one hitter.

So I guess what I’m getting at is if instant replay should be added, or should I say, extended to the point that questionable calls should be reviewed. Right now, the only thing that is reviewable is fair (home run) or foul calls, whether the ball actually left the playing field, or whether the ball was subject to spectator interference. I think that instant replay should be extended to be able to reverse out and safe calls because something like that can determine or change the outcome of the game. However, to do this without slowing the game down is crucial. There should be two extra empires looking at the game through monitors and should automatically review a call if it looks questionable. Things like costing a team a run, a pitcher a perfect game or a no hitter should be reviewable. With the advancement in technology nowadays, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this quickly and efficiently. Balls and strikes should never be reviewable. The questionable and the importance of calls is something the MLB will have to figure out how to determine. We don’t want to see another perfect game go down the drain due to a call the empires get right 99.9 percent of the time.


http://live.drjays.com/index.php/2010/06/03/almost-perfect-why-baseball-needs-instant-replay/