A Call for Instant Replay

Is there anything more frustrating in baseball than the terrible calls on balls and strikes? There’s no reason for it either. In this age of rampaging technology, there is no reason we should have to watch a terribly blind or paid-off home plate umpire call a third strike on a pitch that was at least a foot outside.

David Wright couldn’t save last night’s WBC game against Japan. He couldn’t overcome the bad call for strike three. He had to walk meekly to the dugout; he had to be content with whatever few words he managed to squeeze off to the fool or thief behind the plate.

The bad call decided the game. Japan’s pitcher Dice K was on the ropes. There was a man on first and second with just one out. Wright was the U.S.’s best hitter at the plate. Wright hung tough, fouling off pitch after pitch on the outside corner of the plate before taking the pitch that was obviously well outside.

But it was only obvious to everyone at home watching on TV and to everyone in the stands. The thief behind the mask thought it nipped the outside corner. As it was a breaking ball, he saw his opportunity to steal the game and he took it. He knew the next batter, Adam Dunn, wouldn’t have a chance. And he didn’t.

It didn’t really matter that Derek Jeter made it all moot by bungling a routine throw to first base in the next inning, keeping the inning alive so that the Japanese could put the game out of reach. All his error did was to hopefully keep him off the next version of the WBC USA baseball team. The game had already been decided. The umpire killed off the USA’s best chance.

I had been a big proponent of the WBC until last night. Now I’ll join the plethora of print and TV journalists trying to downplay the excitement we’ve been witnessing night after night. Speaking of payoffs, Major League Baseball has been exerting all its muscle apparently to coax the very worst out of these media hypocrites.

I’ve seen articles to the effect that the fans don’t care, that the players don’t care; this despite the evidence of our own eyes. I’ve seen ridiculous statistics pulled right out of their anuses to prove that U.S. baseball participants do worse with their major league club after playing in the Classic. We’ve seen the Yankees complain bitterly about a dogging-it second baseman whining about a sore shoulder.

But now I don’t care. If the games can’t be played fairly, I’m not interested. It’s too easy for the umpires to cheat, too easy for them to be influenced.

Much as the NBA tries to convince us that their referees are clean and fair, MLB and WBC officials will try to convince us that instant replay would never work for balls and strikes.

But a very similar type of situation exists in tennis. A ball or strike call is basically a line call. Tennis players are given three challenges. TV already has the box it throws on the screen. I’d be much more comfortable with that. You can still keep the idiots and thieves behind the plate.

I’ve had it with officials. Given any opportunity to fail, they take it. They would have us believe, in the NBA, that the stars really didn’t take five or six steps on their way to that driving dunk; they would have us believe that rookies commit all the fouls.

And MLB would have us believe that they didn’t know players had been shooting crap into their butts for years and years. They’d have us believe that they had no interest in increasing home run totals after the big strike. And they’d have us believe that it would be impossible to challenge horrible calls on balls and strikes. The same of course goes for the WBC.

Maybe the stakes in this event are too high to expect an honest umpire. After all, it’s not just the U.S. watching. The world is watching. They anxiously wait to see which team is the best in the world.

Japan takes on S. Korea now for the crown. But I won’t be watching. I’ll just spend my time wondering what Wright would have done with the next pitch, a pitch that might have been in the strike zone.