From this column:
"When you enter into a game that involves people, you are going to see people playing a game, flaws and all. If I want PS2, I can just go upstairs and steal it from my kids."
Excuse me, sorry. I forgot to add the emphasis that completely undercuts the argument.
"When you enter into a game that involves people, you are going to see people playing a game, flaws and all. If I want PS2, I can just go upstairs and steal it from my kids."
With or without replay, pitchers are going to hang breaking balls, batters are going to take ugly hacks, throws will be dropped, pop-outs lost in the sun, and so on ad infinitum. Humans will play a game extremely well but imperfectly. I think we all agree that part of what makes sports interesting is that the players are imperfect and their mistakes can decide games.
THEIR mistakes can and should decide games. OFFICIATING mistakes should not. Game officials ARE NOT PART OF THE GAME, any further than what's necessary to arbitrate it and expedite it and otherwise stay out of the way.
People who fail to distinguish between a player's imperfections and a game official's imperfections are either being really stupid, really disingenuous, or both. At best the former. I can't even put into words just how illogical the argument is, or how angry that particular illogic makes me.
While we're here, a point well worth making but that doesn't even remotely justify the conclusion some people use it to draw. Again from Kreidler's column:
"[T]he truth is that replay has borne out, time and again, that Major League Baseball umps do a very good job, a consistently good job, under split-second conditions. They don't miss much. Most of you would take their success ratio into your line of work any day of the week."
Based on what some people have written in the past 24 hours, apparently it's completely acceptable for a blown call to decide a game, explicitly because it doesn't happen very often. Never mind the magnitude of the consequences or the relatively low cost of putting in a system to bring that already very small number of mistakes closer to zero.
There's a very interesting cost-benefit analysis to be done here, or would be if it weren't for people who have column inches to fill yet are too stubburn to even consider it.
You know what? I'm now steadfastly opposed to the use of computers in any transaction wherein somebody performs a service for Mark Kreidler. Next time he takes his car into the mechanic (or his body in for a routine physical), don't even bother running any diagnostics. Let the mechanic (or doctor) figure things out on his own. Mechanics and doctors only rarely make mistakes, so why second-guess them? Besides, if they screw up, that's part of the beauty of life.
Posted by Matt Bruce at October 13, 2005 04:07 PM1). Making a long game longer. Big Ten has proven that this year. Still not big on that idea.
2). The NFL this year has PROVEN that replay still actually doesn't correct things even under the indisputable visual evidence standard.
3). What else would we have left for "The Top Five Reasons You Can't Blame..."?
Posted by: Craig D. Barker at October 14, 2005 09:30 PMIt's not that blown calls are acceptable; it's that they are inherent in the sport until it is possible to design completely non-human officiating. When you are willing to advocate that balls and strikes be completely removed from the home plate umpire's responsibilities and a fifth umpire be added to the crew whose job is to monitor the computer that calls balls and strikes, then perhaps I will believe that technological advances as an officiating aid are useful rather than a cumbersome layer that may catch some errors but generally detracts from the game like the extra game officials mandated by College Bowl.
Posted by: Anthony at October 15, 2005 12:48 AMAh, yes, I should add that the cost-benefit analysis you suggest is a matter of a possibly marginal improvement in fairness vs. a probably non-marginal decline in audience enjoyment. The greater the possibility of delays, the less exciting it will be because of pauses that dull anticipation and the question is whether or not the excitement factor should bear any weight when measured against possible increases in fairness, however small.
Oh, I suppose there's also an actual monetary cost-benefit analysis, wherein MLB probably doesn't want to cough up the money necessary to fund additional officials. Considering an umpire's salary is around $100K to 350K, plus benefits, plus hotel/meals/transportation, and there are equipment costs, well, someone else can do the math.