Before landing this dream job writing about sports, I was a manager at a movie theatre, where I spent most of my time either watching free movies, or playing fantasy sports.  Of course there were the customer service duties as well, but let’s not allow that to interfere with more important priorities.  Every so often we would get a customer, usually their age north of 60 years old, complaining that we didn’t advertise in the newspapers anymore.

In the small town the theatre was located in, where three colleges made up the bulk of our customers, advertising in the news papers was a total waste of time, especially when we were advertising on our web site.  To the 60 and up crowd, this was an outrage.  They didn’t have this “internet” and didn’t see why we couldn’t spend money to advertise our movie times to the small percentage of our customers who didn’t have the internet (never mind the fact that we also had the times listed on the phone line, which didn’t help one woman who not only was without the internet, but had a roto-dial phone, making it impossible to use our navigation menu.  I’m convinced she was over 100 and had no business going out to see a movie.)

I’m always shocked when people don’t have the internet.  It’s the main reason I could never live in the country.  My in-laws live in an area that only gets dial up, and even that experience is enough to make me want to shove a pencil in my temple.  Once I realize the technology is there, I can’t live without it.  That’s why I’ve never understood baseball’s aversion to instant replay.

I was surprised to hear that Major League Baseball was broaching the subject of instant replay.  I was even more surprised to find that we may see instant replay by August of this season.  The biggest surprise of all was when I found that there are actually people who still oppose instant replay.  I would guess these are the same people calling in to movie theatres complaining about the lack of newspaper advertising, but they are posting these comments online, so that can’t be the case.  My next guess would be that this group of people is the next generation of the die-hard (both figuratively and literally) newspaper crowd.

To oppose instant replay in baseball is outright ridiculous.  I saw one person who was actually opposed to instant replay, with his reasoning being that he likes how bad calls factor in to the game.  That’s like saying you hate the appeal process in the court system because you like when innocent people get sent to their deaths for a murder they didn’t commit.  The reason baseball is no longer our past time is because baseball lives in the past time.  Baseball is the only sport without an equal revenue sharing plan, a salary cap, and instant replay.  Adding instant replay improves the game in so many ways.

1.  No more Jeffrey Maier or Matt Holliday’s chin.  From now on we get a definite ruling, rather than a call from a single umpire who views it as a personal insult if you suggest he might have made a mistake.  As I am writing this tonight I am watching the Tigers/Giants game.  Ivan Rodriguez was called safe at the plate, despite the fact that replays clearly showed him being tagged out.  This run put the Tigers up 4-3 in the 7^th inning.  As for the stubborn umpires…

2.  Instant replay saves baseball from its self.  In all sports you will have disagreements between coaches and referees, but only in baseball do you get to see the coach throw a childish temper-tantrum over a botched call.  Of course, not wanting to lose their perceived spot light in the game, umpires will yell right back, putting on a little circus act until the manager eventually gets tossed.  Not only does this make the manager and the umpire look ridiculous, but it makes the manager’s job look totally worthless.  Think about it.  If a manager’s job was so important, do you think he would argue a single call, knowing it’s not going to be overturned, and knowing he’s getting tossed for the final innings of the game?  Do you think Bill Belichick is going to instigate a fight that will get him tossed for the 4^th quarter in a close game?

3.  You could say that instant replay slows down the game, but what you are ignoring is how an argument between a manager and an umpire brings the game to a complete halt.  Under a “war room” system of instant replay analysis, the ruling would come fairly quickly, as it does in hockey.  You could fit five or six instant replays in the time it takes a manager and an umpire to argue a botched call, followed by the umpire tossing the manager, followed by the manager taking a few minutes to hand over the lineup card to the bench coach.

A lot of people in baseball are speaking out against replay, in favor of the job the umpires are doing.  That only makes sense.  If you’re a ball player in a system where it is accepted that umpires use arbitrary strike zones, how do you think it would benefit you to speak out against the performance of these umpires?  My favorite quote was one I saw from Baltimore’s hitting coach Terry Crowley, who said “Every once in awhile (the umpires) get one wrong, but I would bet they get 99 out of 100 right, probably more.”  Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but more than 99 out of 100 could only be 100 out of 100, which is totally against the theory that umpires get calls wrong.  Unless there is an umpire who ruled that a player was kind of safe, I chalk Crowley’s comments up to nothing more than saying the right things to stay on the good side of the umpires.

We’ve reached a period in sports where instant replay is a necessity.  It’s embarrassing to see a horribly botched call.  For baseball it is embarrassing to see that botched call, and have everyone in the game publically state that they approve of the wrong call being made.  Nothing sells your sport like coming out and saying “Sometimes the wrong team will win, and that’s something that makes this game great.”  The only sport where you can spend three hours watching a contest, only for the wrong team to win on a botched call is professional wrestling.  Allowing the umpires to have the final say in calls like the botched A-Rod homer this year is just as bad as going out on to the field and hitting A-Rod with a steel chair in mid-swing.

Baseball is finally catching up to the times with instant replay, and there really should be no contesting the merits that a replay system will bring the game.  Anyone suggesting that baseball is better off with the wrong calls being made needs to join the modern sports era.  With any hope, this small breakthrough could be the start of great things for baseball, such as revenue sharing and a salary cap, you know, those other things that already exist in every other major sport.