The Need For An Instant Replay

Now, I am a huge fan of implementing an instant replay rule in baseball. I believe replay should be used in many cases except for balls and strikes. We might be a long way from the way instant replay is used in the other leagues, but a home run instant replay rule might come soon.

Tonight the umps blew their third home run call in four days. The latest, a A-Rod no doubter that bounced back in, and the umps got together and called it a double. Home runs are too important for games to be left to human error, especially when we have the technology to make it 100% correct.

Many say instant replay will ruin tradition or slow the game down. I laugh at those notions. Baseball is not the same as it was in the late 1800's, it's changed a lot and thats whats expected in anything over a century. Tradition officially changed with the DH and no more day World Series games. Also an extra five minutes to make the right call won't kill a game. Commercial timeouts, now thats a waste of time, which also drives players crazy.

Every sport has instant replay in some degree and it's time baseball does the same. Some might call mistakes a part of baseball, but that's idiotic. It was part of the game because we had no choice. Now, to not do anything when you can get calls completely right, thats idiotic and irresponsible.

Think about your team down a run in game 7 of the World Series. Your batter hits what he thinks is the game winning two run home run, only to have it called foul when it was really fair. All because people (especially umpires) don't want the game to be foolproof. How infuriated would you be that you had something stolen from you? That's when umpires get death threats, and I wouldn't blame the fans for doing so.