First appeared on Blogcritics.
Let us make something clear – being a MLB umpire is a thankless, difficult, and overwhelming job. Besides larger than life guys like the late Ron Luciano or Harry Wendelstedt, they are basically faceless fellows dressed like undertakers on their day off. They get less than necessary support from MLB after training in “umpire college,” and then they are scapegoats for everything wrong under the sun and stars that happens on the field. People forget that they are human and expect them to be robotic – perfect, flawless, yet having the “wisdom” to make the call in their favor. Who the heck would ever want to be an MLB umpire?
As a Mets fan, I have seen probably at least a thousand calls that went against my team over the years – sometimes in very detrimental ways. These incidents include playoff games and the World Series. Whether or not the call was fair (usually determined by instant replay) we have to understand that the umpire is standing closer to the play than we (or the TV camera) are. It is a split-second decision. Old sayings like “the tie goes to the runner” or “it’s a game of inches” always come to mind here, so whenever a play goes against our team we blame the man in black and gray.
What I fear is that we are gravitating away from the way the game of baseball has been played since the beginning. If three challenges are allowed now, doesn’t it seem likely that will be deemed insufficient down the road? Will we reach five challenges one day? Perhaps it will become a game where every play is challenged, or we will get to the place I think no one wants – where games are monitored electronically and every call is done remotely by some faceless Big Brother who deems “fair or foul,” “ball or strike,” and “safe or out.”
If you think I am exaggerating, the idea of “challenges” in baseball a decade ago would have been unthinkable, and look where we are now. Right now games are getting longer and longer. If I take my kids to Citi Field for an evening game, there is a good chance I am going to be getting them home after midnight. How will challenges impact the pace of games already as quick as a tortoise? Also, how will the concept of challenges affect the umpires themselves? Already these fellows are on edge all of the time, but now with the thought of the ominous presence of Big Brother Selig and his minions hovering over the field, what will that do to each and every call? More importantly, how will this affect the integrity of the game we know and love?
These questions are not easily answered, and I think more thought and discussion should be allowed before this is pushed forward. It was noted that the umpiring crew on the field will not make the decision based on the replay, rather it will be an umpiring crew and MLB official in the New York offices who will view the replay and make the call. Talk about Big Brother! This is taking the game out of the umpire’s hands and giving it to faceless bureaucrats to make decisions from far away. How can a crowd in Anaheim “boo” anyone they cannot see?
Commissioner Selig has wanted to get back to the real game – witness his war on steroid abusers. The idea has been, at least I have understood it to be, to get back to the true nature of the game. I always think of Robert Redford’s great baseball movie The Natural because the title says it all – his character Roy Hobbs was by human nature a “natural” superstar. He didn’t need to take pills or get shots in his buttocks to hit home runs. That is the game the way it is supposed to be played, and I felt Selig wanted to get back to that.
Every baseball fan wants the game to be played the right way, and we all want to know that the only thing shooting through the veins of our heroes besides blood is adrenaline – manifested from the love of the game and a desire to do the best job between the lines. Unfortunately, the game has changed over the years. The ball is livelier, the gloves and bats are better, the athletes more conditioned, and everything is under the scrutiny of the evil eye of the camera. We have pitch counts, radar guns, and the designated hitter. We have suffered through artificial turf, retractable domes, and a game that has become mostly played at night. Yes, the game has changed in these ways, but there has been a desire for more traditional approaches from fans and players alike.
These challenges will take away from the game, just as the DH has. If you watch National League games, you get more baseball purity. A manager makes different decisions with a pitcher batting; pitchers pitch differently because they are batting, and strategy is a more integral part of the game. How will challenges change managerial strategy? How will fans react if a manager does not use his challenges at times they believe that he should? How about a manager using up his challenges and then, at a pivotal moment, be left like a gunfighter in the middle of the street without any bullets, while the other manager draws and wins the fight?
I know many fans will like this proposal of expanded instant replay, thinking it will be a way to avoid all the past wrongs and injustices. Players will probably love it too (except those who lose base hits, homeruns, and no-hitters because of it). The problem is that this is like opening a hatch on a submarine; once it’s open, chances are the water will keep on coming in. I fear the change of the game will continue until it looks nothing like the game we know and love, and at that disgraceful moment the game will be ruined forevermore.
Photo credits: selig – AP, umpire robot – lukewarmssports.blogspot.com; umpire – Wikipedia.org
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