Let’s begin by saying that I think instant replay has been badly misused in sports. We are trying so hard to be perfect with every call that games can grind to a halt. Sometimes referees and umpires don’t even bother to make a call; they just head straight for the video feed, because they know they will get challenged no matter what they call.
Here is how replay would be handled if I were the Ruler of all Sports: Give five random sports fans a remote control and let them watch the game. If a call is made and all five fans hit the buzzer that the call was missed, the call gets reviewed. In other words, unless the mistake was so egregious that it’s obvious to everyone, let it go. Otherwise, play on.
Having said that, baseball would be the instant replay exception
Not that I think baseball umps are any better or worse than football or basketball, but think about it this way: Nearly every call in baseball is a binary choice The call is safe or out, fair or foul, or ball or strike. It’s either one or the other, with no gray area. The gray areas arise through human bias or being out of position to see the play clearly. Technology can address both of those issues, without disrupting the flow of the game if done properly.
In basketball, on the other hand, there are 17 hands grabbing for the ball and the referee has to figure out which one touched it last before it went out of bounds. Sometimes the referee can look at the video for 10 minutes and still not be certain. Or a football referee trying to find the ball under a few thousand pounds of flesh and deciding if it was past the goal line before the runner’s knee touched the ground. And don’t get me started on pass interference.
Baseball is different. There is never more than one player from each team involved in the action, and the calls occur at clearly defined places at bases and along the foul lines.
Think about how tennis has used laser technology to practically eliminate line judges, and ask yourself why that wouldn’t work with fair/foul calls in baseball. The verdict is instantaneous, the crowd sees it in real time, and the arguments in tennis have gone from constant to hardly ever. It should be the same with the foul line in baseball.
Technology is already being experimented with for ball/strike calls, and if that means we have heard the last of every umpire having his own personal strike zone, the game will be better for it. As the last postseason demonstrated, a consistent interpretation of check swings is also much needed, and technology can monitor that better than humans.
Safe/out calls are probably best handled by umpires, and the challenge system is probably the best way to adjudicate close calls, but there’s enough downtime in baseball to review every safe/out call while the next hitter adjusts himself before he steps into the box. If a call is clearly missed, it can and should be fixed, with or without a challenge. But, if there’s not clear evidence of a mistake that can be clearly identified before the next batter is ready to hit, move on.
We can’t fix everything with technology (balks will be indecipherable no matter what), but there are clearly ways in which technology can be used more effectively to both limit mistakes and keep the game moving smoothly. Baseball should embrace these changes.