Bud Selig Might Do Something Good
Good news. It turns out 80% of MLB general managers are able to convince Bud Selig to stop being an idiot. Selig has long been a staunch opponent of instant replay, but after MLB GMs voted 25-5 in favor of exploring its use Selig says he will reconsider his stance.
Well, that’s a start.
Selig is still concerned about instant replay causing a lot of delays. Apparently he enjoys the delays that occur when managers come out of the dugout to argue calls that have no chance of being overturned, but he thinks the much shorter replay delays that actually accomplish something will ruin the game. If replay is eventually used, at the start it will only be for “boundary calls”—which basically means just for disputed home runs calls. Hopefully at some point “safe or out” calls will be added as well.
All of this is good news because it’s insane that there still isn’t instant replay in baseball. What if there had been conclusive evidence that Matt Holliday was out at the plate? Not having replay would have cost a team a playoff birth—that’s basically the worst thing possible. How could Selig defend not using something that prevents that? I guarantee if replays had showed Holliday was out the ensuing PR fiasco would have Selig championing replay as much as possible. So why should he wait for a disaster to happen before taking action?
For right now, the baseball people in favor of replay need to push it as hard as possible and begin working on a plan. It should be fairly easy. Just give each manager two challenges a game. Give him a third if he gets the first two right. Same as football. The only foreseeable problem is that every close but still obvious call in the 9th inning could end up being challenged, but MLB should be able to get around that by finding a way to punish teams for missed challenges. Can you imagine a baseball future with no blown calls? The sports world will be knocked of its axis. It will be like when the NCAA figured out a 64 team tournament would be really easy to gamble on.
2 Comments »
basmati on 07 Nov 2007 at 11:23 am #
You don’t think that the replays conclusively showed that Holliday was out?
shakedownsports on 07 Nov 2007 at 2:53 pm #
he was probably out—but i think the evidence was just inconclusive enough to let people forget about it.