Bud Selig Feels No Pressure To Expand Instant Replay

I keep on saying how much I dislike complaining about instant replay and yet, here I am, complaining about instant replay. Maybe I actually do enjoy complaining about it. Maybe I only feel truly alive when experiencing the vital adrenaline surge of pure, righteous anger. Maybe I can’t even trust myself anymore. I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize who it is staring back at me. But nevermind all that, I honestly do tire of retreading the same arguments and examples over and over again, around and around ad nauseum until everyone barfs all over each other like that scene in the Sandlot when they took chewing tobacco on the Trabant. That’s what ad naseum means, right? Big Chief: The Best!

We already have instant replay in baseball. We get to use it when the umpires aren’t sure if a batted ball was a home run or not. If they’re not sure, or maybe they’re just cold or tired and could go for a little break, they talk it over with one another and then shuffle into a little room somewhere and look at a little TV. They look at that little TV and talk to an on-site technician and they keep looking at the TV until they decide whether the ball was a home run or not. It’s so simple it just might work! Well, there’s been talk of expanding this marveling enterprise, and opening the doors to review trapped balls, fair and foul calls down the line, and fan interference incidents. You know, things that have a direct influence on the outcome of baseball games. Calls that would be nice to get correct with a certain high-level of consistency.

Those calls will have to wait, at least until 2013, because Bud Selig is not feeling any pressure to expand instant replay. You see, Bud Selig is a man of the people, and he talks to the people, and the people he talks to have not been putting the screws to Bud in regards to instant replay, and Bud likes that just fine. When asked about the topic, Bud Selig Man of the People said “I’ve had very, very little pressure from people who want to do more.” So, fair enough?

I’d love to know who Bud is talking to about this topic, because a quick browse of the internet or even major sports news networks these days would show, I feel, a great deal of words and energy and effort being expelled in order to make Bud feel this all-important pressure. On that point, it’s super encouraging that while the commissioner of baseball may know in his heart of hearts that the truth and best interests of the game he oversees is going on underserviced, he’ll only be compelled to action by a certain level of perceived political pressure. God Bless America. On the other point—the point of what Bud Selig is saying about this matter being patently false—his statement puts him in the unfortunate position where the only logical conclusions to jump to are that he is either a) Completely unwilling or unable to empathize with the feelings and opinions of a great majority of baseball fans, or b) Lying. Straight up lying. Liar liar Milwaukeean pants on hell of fire.

So I don’t know. Expanded instant replay will eventually be a reality. The wheels of progress move slowly, but they move. Bud Selig doesn’t feel any pressure to address this topic right now. This is my humble attempt to apply a bit more. You’re killing me, Selig. Maybe if enough silly nerds and truth seekers rally together on the expansive tubes of the internet and elsewhere, that pressure could eventually find its way to Bud Selig’s crusty, old, dumb heart. So get out your vices and clamps and air compressors. Squeeze your fists together really hard. Yell or something, I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is we need to apply pressure in some way.

Kyle writes baseball nonsense at The Trance of Waiting. You can follow him on Twitter @AgainstKyle.