April 2, 2014--Kill the Umpire!
After a funky start last week that saw the L.A. Dodgers play two games with the Arizona Diamondbacks in Australia, yesterday was the full launch of the official baseball season. For me, a lifelong Yankee fan, this means the Bronx Bombers got off to a bad start against, losing to the Houston Astros 6 to 2.
In addition to a year-long celebration of Derek Jeter's last season (he got one hit and scored a run in the season opener), Major League Baseball is expanding its instant-replay rules. In recent years, because of a number of controversies about whether or not home runs were fair or foul, they instituted replays so umpires could get it right.
Not everyone was happy with any rule changes in America's most traditional sport, but since home runs are so consequential, umpires were allowed to use technology.
For this season, there are new, much more dramatic options available to umpires and, most debated, managers.
As in football and tennis, they are being given a number of challenges.
Up to the 6th inning, managers will have one challenge and then after that two more.
Umpires will still use replay for home runs but managers can challenge if a ball hit down the left-field line is fair or foul, if a runner is or isn't tagged out when running the base paths or attempting to steal, if a fielder catches a ball cleanly or traps it; on a bang-bang play at first base if a runner beats the throw or not; or if a hit qualifies as a ground-rule double.
Though this will reduce umpiring errors, it will slow down even more a game that routinely moves along at a languorous pace. It can take five minutes to check every camera angle to adjudicate an especially close call. Baseball is often referred to as a "game of inches." With replay it will become a game of centimeters. And if all six challenges are used they will eat up another half hour of game time.
Much more concerning than slowing the game down, this new-fangled approach (from this phrase alone you can see I belong in the traditionalist camp) will result in eliminating from the game any lingering controversies.
One of the best things about baseball has been that it permits controversies to fester, especially during the long off season when blown plays and bad calls are topics for endless discussion over coffee in the Hot Stove League.
Did Reggie Jackson intentionally move his hip in order to be hit by a throw in the 4th game of the1978 World Series, thereby breaking up a potential double play? If he did, he would have been automatically out. The umpired ruled otherwise. Probably incorrectly. And the Yanks went on to win. But who knows.
Did Ed Armbrister interfere with Carlton Fisk's throw to second base in the 2005 American League Championship Series? Who knows.
Was Jackie Robinson safe or out when attempting to steal home in the 1955 World Series? The umpire called him safe but to this day, nearly 60 years later, Yankee catcher Yogi Berra still claims Jackie was out. I saw the play on TV and though I was half-blinded by the snowy black-and-white picture think Yogi's right. But then again, who knows.
Isn't that the point? Who knows indeed.
For certain things getting it exactly right is important, even essential. In triple-bypass surgery, for example, you want things to be exactly right. But for close plays at first or home, not being certain reflects the reality of life itself, where so little is certain.
It is for this reason, before they automate everything, including the calling of balls and strikes (and there is the technology to do so), that baseball endures as sports' most metaphoric game.
Where, as in life, there's a role for stealing; in baseball's judicial system, a place for "judgement calls" and "appeal plays"; and a place for getting something for nothing--bases on balls come to mind. Also, for "errors" as well as bottom-of-the-ninth heroics.
And in a world ruled more and more by time where in nanoseconds one can earn or lose millions, isn't it still nice to have something important going on that doesn't depend on the rule of time?
Best of all, there are 161 games to go before the playoffs.
In addition to a year-long celebration of Derek Jeter's last season (he got one hit and scored a run in the season opener), Major League Baseball is expanding its instant-replay rules. In recent years, because of a number of controversies about whether or not home runs were fair or foul, they instituted replays so umpires could get it right.
Not everyone was happy with any rule changes in America's most traditional sport, but since home runs are so consequential, umpires were allowed to use technology.
For this season, there are new, much more dramatic options available to umpires and, most debated, managers.
As in football and tennis, they are being given a number of challenges.
Up to the 6th inning, managers will have one challenge and then after that two more.
Umpires will still use replay for home runs but managers can challenge if a ball hit down the left-field line is fair or foul, if a runner is or isn't tagged out when running the base paths or attempting to steal, if a fielder catches a ball cleanly or traps it; on a bang-bang play at first base if a runner beats the throw or not; or if a hit qualifies as a ground-rule double.
Though this will reduce umpiring errors, it will slow down even more a game that routinely moves along at a languorous pace. It can take five minutes to check every camera angle to adjudicate an especially close call. Baseball is often referred to as a "game of inches." With replay it will become a game of centimeters. And if all six challenges are used they will eat up another half hour of game time.
Much more concerning than slowing the game down, this new-fangled approach (from this phrase alone you can see I belong in the traditionalist camp) will result in eliminating from the game any lingering controversies.
One of the best things about baseball has been that it permits controversies to fester, especially during the long off season when blown plays and bad calls are topics for endless discussion over coffee in the Hot Stove League.
Did Reggie Jackson intentionally move his hip in order to be hit by a throw in the 4th game of the1978 World Series, thereby breaking up a potential double play? If he did, he would have been automatically out. The umpired ruled otherwise. Probably incorrectly. And the Yanks went on to win. But who knows.
Did Ed Armbrister interfere with Carlton Fisk's throw to second base in the 2005 American League Championship Series? Who knows.
Was Jackie Robinson safe or out when attempting to steal home in the 1955 World Series? The umpire called him safe but to this day, nearly 60 years later, Yankee catcher Yogi Berra still claims Jackie was out. I saw the play on TV and though I was half-blinded by the snowy black-and-white picture think Yogi's right. But then again, who knows.
Isn't that the point? Who knows indeed.
For certain things getting it exactly right is important, even essential. In triple-bypass surgery, for example, you want things to be exactly right. But for close plays at first or home, not being certain reflects the reality of life itself, where so little is certain.
It is for this reason, before they automate everything, including the calling of balls and strikes (and there is the technology to do so), that baseball endures as sports' most metaphoric game.
Where, as in life, there's a role for stealing; in baseball's judicial system, a place for "judgement calls" and "appeal plays"; and a place for getting something for nothing--bases on balls come to mind. Also, for "errors" as well as bottom-of-the-ninth heroics.
And in a world ruled more and more by time where in nanoseconds one can earn or lose millions, isn't it still nice to have something important going on that doesn't depend on the rule of time?
Best of all, there are 161 games to go before the playoffs.
Labels: Baseball, Carlton Fisk, Dodgers, Houston Astros, Instant Replay, Jackie Robinson, Reggie Jackson, World Series, Yankees, Yogi Berra
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:04 AM
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