Comment & Debate
Bill Pollock. “No need for instant replay in baseball.” Missouri Net. June 4, 2010: “this call perfectly illustrates my point…that call ultimately did not affect the score of the game, the final outcome…and that has long been my stand against replay for umpires, plus to tie into that, I have not heard a plan yet that is rock solid for baseball. So while bad or missed calls happen, they are not happening with a frequency that has affected wins and losses at enough of a rate to raise enough concern. Just to add technology because it is there, does not mean it’s the best plan.”
Ross Douthat. “Against Instant Replay” New York Times. June 3, 2010: “extraordinary cases make bad law. There’s a reason that sportswriters immediately reached for Don Denkinger’s botched “safe” call in the 1985 World Series, which sent the Cardinals tailspinning to defeat, as the closest analogy to what happened last night — because blown calls this high-stakes and this egregious are exceptional, once-in-a-decade events. (The particular circumstances of last night’s call will probably never recur in a lifetime.) Whereas the solution to the problem — some kind of football-style system, in which managers get one or two replay “challenges” per game — would affect almost every baseball contest, week in and week out, across the entire 162-game season. To avoid the extraordinary bad calls, you have to start overturning the quotidian bad calls, the gaffes and brain cramps that have always been part of the warp and woof of the game and that have never detracted a whit from anyone’s enjoyment of it. And I’m pretty sure that would be a mistake.”