Baseball and instant replay: Is it about time?

In an op-ed piece in Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal of Oct. 22-28, Eldon L. Ham, an adjunct professor of sports law and society at Chicago-Kent College of Law, argues persuasively about “An indisputable need for replay.”

Replay opponents steadfastly argue that baseball is a 162-game marathon, not a sprint, and therefore all its imperfections smooth themselves out over time. Such reasoning has merit and is consistent with our uniquely irreverent approach to baseball, its mischievous legacy, and even the game’s appropriately flawed personality.

Proponents of replay cite the absurdity of keeping a wrong call wrong and argue that crowning an illegitimate champion in the interest of stubborn complacency is an arbitrary self-indulgence. Baseball, they insist, should remain a game of inches and not of intractable umpires.”

Technology has improved so much that replay is now a staple of other sports, such as tennis and football. That it proves that referees and umpires are fallible is unquestionable, but do such errors cause players and fans to question the accuracy and competence of these officials and erode their authority?

Ham declares replays are necessary because of “the nature of the modern playoff system; big stakes including big dollars; and evolving societal demands for fairness.” If both sides are playing under the same conditions, such as the recent attack of the midges in the Indians-Yankees playoff series, there is no advantage. It’s not as if one team is playing with the advanced technology and the other isn’t.

I find the recent instance on chicanery in the Louisville-UConn football game more problematic.

The Louisville player, waiting to receive a punt, seemingly called for a fair catch, but once he caught the ball, he took off down the field for a touchdown, as the UConn defense had understandly lowered their guard. There was no question of this violation of sportsmanship. According to ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, and as Ham agrees, the loss of a single football game can mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But Ham’s argument that “America has become a Court TV nation that demands justice, fairness…” is moot (from a layman’s point of view). The pursuit of justice and fairness have always been a hallmark of civilized nations.

This is the whole purpose of the Bill of Rights, civil rights, DNA evidence and that great bastion of national probity, NFL instant replay.

(I doubt that’s what our forefathers had envisioned when the composed the Bill of Rights.)

Ham suggests that replay be used only in the playoffs: “Blow one call in a five-game series and baseball history is changed. Blow it in the World Series and a slice of American history is altered.”

Why should that make the difference? What if the same event had occurred a week before the end of the the regular season and put the Rockies into the playoffs at the expense of the Padres? The injustice still would have been done.

Ham would like to see a system that does “not review everything, especially balls and strikes, but develop an intelligent but limited system to get the black-and-white threshold calls correct: missed tags, missed bases, home runs and long foul balls.”