Why not expand instant replay in baseball?
Photo credit: Getty/Jared Wickerham | NEW YORK - OCTOBER 09: Melky Cabrera #53 of the New York Yankees fails to make a play on a ball that lands fair but is called foul by umpire Phil Cuzzi in the eleventh inning agains against the Minnesota Twins in Game Two of the ALDS during the 2009 MLB Playoffs at Yankee Stadium on October 9, 2009 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)
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ALDS Game 2: Yankees 4, Twins 3
MINNEAPOLIS – As the Yankees and Twins went from the Boogie Down to the Big Chill – temperatures in the 30s outside the Metrodome yesterday – the buzz in this could-be-over-tonight ALDS was still about umpire Phil Cuzzi’s horrendous call in the 11th inning on Friday night.
It has revived a national debate about instant replay in baseball. Was it really only a year ago that MLB started using 1980s technology to help umpires on home run calls? Baseball is so afraid to be wrong that it took forever to use modest means to get a limited number of plays right.
So far it has worked. Now it’s time for baseball to expand the use of replay so travesties like the Cuzzi Call don’t happen again.
Instead of umpires down each foul line, MLB should have a fifth umpire at every game. That umpire can sit in the press box and be the “replay umpire.” Whenever he sees a blatant, unmistakable error, he buzzes down, halts play and takes a look at it. (If the buzzer gives the offending umpire a slight electrical jolt, so much the better.)
Obviously, you can’t use this for balls and strikes. But you can use it for safe/out, tag/not tag, fair/foul, home run/not home run. A lot of stuff that is routinely ruled incorrectly and can have a big outcome on important games.
I know, I know, you’re worried about it taking too long and “losing the human element” and stuff like that. Well, it’s not going to take that long. Here’s the whole transaction:
Replay umpire: Bzzzz. That call was wrong. The ball was fair. Put Joe Mauer on second.
Crew chief: OK.
And what’s so great about the human element went all it does is open that human (Cuzzi) and his entire profession to scorn and ridicule? And deprives the Twins of a huge hit in the 11th inning of a playoff game.
By now you know the details. Cuzzi was the leftfield umpire when Mauer sent a slicing ball down the line. Melky Cabrera went after it but couldn’t grab it, and the ball fell fair on the dirt inside the foul line and bounced into the seats for what should have been a ground-rule double.
Except Cuzzi – whose only job during this game was to rule on balls down the leftfield line – inexplicably called it foul.
The Twins, also inexplicably, did not argue. Manager Ron Gardenhire said his view of the play was blocked from the third-base dugout, but what about third-base coach Scott Ullger? What about first-base coach Jerry White? What about Twins personnel in the clubhouse? What about the Olsen twins? The twins from “Jon and Kate Plus Eight?” Anyone?
If the Twins had protested, would the umpires have overturned the call? I have a feeling they would have. I have a feeling they would have huddled like they do on home run calls, and the other umpires would have told the leftfield umpire that he got it very wrong and they would have awarded Mauer a double.
Maybe that wouldn't have even been legal, but it would have been the right thing to do.
Gardenhire was upset about the call after Friday’s game. Twins closer Joe Nathan was mad, too, saying: “There's really nothing we can do about a terrible call, and that's really what it was -- a terrible call at the wrong time. When they showed the replay, I thought it was at least going to be a close call, but this thing was clearly about 8 or 10 inches inside the line, and [Cuzzi] was about 10 feet from it."
Mauer, who followed the “double” with a single, was classy yesterday when asked about it.
“We had chances to win and, you know, umpires are human too,” he said. “They’re going to make mistakes.”
Sure they are. But this is 2009. There’s no reason those mistakes can’t be corrected.
