I’ll admit up front, I’m not the biggest fan of instant replay in general. Blown calls have always been a part of sports and I’ve come to accept that. While we would all like to get all the calls right, the game can’t become unwatchable. Baseball is slow enough as it is, and throwing a wet blanket over the few moments of pure celebration that you have will cause the casual fan to be watching Seinfeld reruns instead. I just don’t like the way that instant replay makes your moments of celebration disjointed as a fan. I could compare this to certain women I’ve dated, but lets not go there.
But in any case, I’ve lost this argument. Instant replay is here to stay, now they have to come up with a system of executing it that’s more efficient. In yesterday’s game, the delay between the Posada HR and the final call was ridiculously long. First, Indians manager Eric Wedge came out to argue the Posada HR call, then the umpires had a conference, then Wedge argued some more, then the crew chief strolls over to the cameraman’s area by the visitors dugout, disappears for another two minutes, then has YET ANOTHER conference with his fellow umpires, this time including Girardi and Wedge in the conversation, and then finally makes the call.
I was at the game. Every fan in the ballpark saw the play on a loop for the entire 8.5 minutes. Estimating that in slow motion it was about a 5 second clip, that means the fans watched it roughly 100 times by the time the Crew Chief saw it once.
Bud, you have to be able to come up with a system that’s faster than 8.5 minutes. This isn’t rocket science. Tell the Crew Chief not to stand there arguing with the manager, just have him go straight to the TV booth. Please.
And to make matters worse, according to today’s Daily News they might have still blown the call:
Cleveland right fielder Trevor Crowe tracked Jorge Posada’s high drive to the wall in right field. As the ball came down, it hit Doyle before it got to Crowe’s outstretched glove. “I’ve still got the mark,” said the 33-year-old from Scotch Plains, N.J., pointing to a red mark on the inside of his left wrist.
Crowe said he could have made a play if not for Doyle’s outstretched hands.
“I would have caught it,” he said.
Doyle’s take? “I think he might have.”
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0 Responses to Eight and a half minutes?
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TIQ IQ
Come one. They did not “blow the call” based on that information. “I think I could have made the play” ???? Please. That’s exactly WHY they use replay because the replay showed that at the apex of his jump, Crowe was between 6 and 12 inches away from the trajectory of the ball. The only thing that made it appear that he might have made the play was when the ball bounced off the fan TOWARDS the field. If the stands were empty, that ball goes over Crowes glove and bounces off the back half of the top of the wall and into the RF stands for a clear HR. They nailed the call exactly right. And that is the whole purpose of using replay.
I don’t care how many times you or I saw the replay, the person who was standing there had a better view. If he (clearly a Yankee fan) thinks the fielder would have caught it, its silly for you or I to say otherwise. We had one angle, he was standing right there.
Yeah I don’t think Crowe was catching that. But of course he was going to say he thought he could.
However this instance did appear to be one of the longer replay sessions ever. I blame that on the umpires mainly, because we’ve seen instant replay done in the past and it went off much smoother. I think that when a hr call is in doubt, they should go straight to the replay booth, instead of wasting nearly 4 minutes with useless on field conferences.
Yeah, usually they are shorter, but there should be absolutely no circumstance under which it takes 8 minutes.
Why not just give the umpires some sort of tablet PC and a cell phone? They wouldn’t have to take the time to leave the field and go find some hidden video monitor. Or alternatively, they could just let the war room decide, like the NHL does.
I like the war room idea. Why have the ump leave the field?
Once the ball crosses the plane of the wall, isn’t it fair game for the fans? If so, even if Crowe could have caught the ball, Doyle’s “interference” was perfectly legal.
Exactly. It does not make a difference whether he would have caught it or not, it makes a difference if it crossed the plane. However, if the contact did not cross the plane, the ump can still rule it a HR if he feels that it would not have been caught. It really depends on why they made the call.
I agree, that was my take.