LoCaL sPorts 31
CHAUTAUQUA STAR
FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2014
COMMEnTARy, COnTInuED FROM PAgE 25
Okay. No big deal,
right?
Well, Escobar contended that the count
was actually 4-2 and
he should have been
awarded a walk.
The umpires went to
the instant replay system. Fans watching at
home could clearly see
that Escobar was right.
It should have been
a no-brainer for the
umps on the other side
of those phones.
The umps took off the
headsets and still called
Escobar out. WHAT?
Since when can a player be called out with
a 4-2 count? I thought
instant replay was supposed to fi x these types
of human errors.
Well, if anything
positive came out of the
whole Escobar ordeal,
it’s that you get to read
my obligatory instant
replay commentary
(sound the trumpets
here).
Honestly, I was against
instant replay when
I first heard about it.
I’ve always liked the
human element that
the umpires bring. To
be frank, they’re darn
good at their jobs, too.
If you watched one of
those bang-bang plays
at first base in real
time, there’s almost no
way you could tell what
happened. But these
guys are always in the
right spot and I would
say get the call right 90
percent of the time.
That other 10 percent
is a problem, you say?
Yeah, maybe if it always went against your
favorite team. But some
calls will go for you and
some will go against
you. It’s a long season
and these things have a
way of balancing out.
Also, baseball is
already a very long
game. Major League
Baseball likes to hype
up the Yankees-Red
Sox rivalry as mustsee TV, but how many
people can sit and
watch another 4.5-hour
long baseball game
with a dozen pitching
changes? It seems like
MLB should be trying
to speed up games, not
make them longer.
Though after seeing it
in action (with the Escobar disaster being an
outlier), I’m much more
neutral towards instant
replay. It really doesn’t
take all that long in the
grand scheme of things.
There are trained umpires on the other end
that have lots of camera
angles and slow motion
replays to make sure
the call is right. After,
what, 90 seconds or so,
the call is right one way
or the other.
It’s easy to think back
and wonder what might
have happened to a guy
like Armando Galarraga, who as you might
remember was robbed
of a