Why Baseball Is Doomed

Baseball, unlike other major American sports like football and basketball, revels in its history.  As well it should, as it has survived for around 150 years with very little change.  A basketball game from the 1950’s would be impossible to watch today, with all the two-handed set shots, no dunks, and no one over 6’2”.  Football from that era would be 3 yards and a cloud of dust; no Peyton Manning or Drew Brees to make running backs irrelevant.  But a baseball game from the 1920’s would look pretty much like today, except no closers, no bulked up infielders, and, well, no Negros.

Baseball has survived a lot; decades of institutionalized racism, the rise of player unionization (which every person in management said would destroy the game, which is pretty much the NCAA’s line right now on college players), and the pharmacopeia revolution.  But there may be something baseball can’t survive, something that will slowly destroy an essential piece of the fabric of baseball’s universe.  I am talking about instant replay.

When instant replay was trotted out in pre-season and in Australia, it was heralded as a big success.  Plays could be reviewed in under two minutes!  The game would not be delayed, and the calls would be right!  Who could argue with that?

The truth about instant replay is rearing its ugly head.  One replay took over 5 minutes to review, because the crack team in New York in charge of reviewing plays was busy reviewing another play when the second challenge was made.  Gee, that never happened in pre-season; maybe because all the teams weren’t playing at the same time.  However long the review takes is irrelevant, as we now have to put up with managers delaying the game until the team reviews the play before deciding whether to challenge or not.  And if the manager makes a challenge and is wrong, then there is no chance of reviewing a later decision that is more obviously wrong.  When this happened, the cry of many at ESPN was to demand replay on every play.

When baseball was played 100 years ago, when a right handed batter hit a ground ball into the hole and the shortstop backhanded the ball, planted his feet and fired to first base, it was a bang-bang play.  It still is today.  Baseball is a game of dozens, maybe hundreds of close plays.  Was the ball down the line fair or foul, did the fielder catch the ball before he dropped it or not, was the tag applied before or after the runner reached the base?  One game was delayed when the catcher asked what the count was and the umps had to check instant replay. 

Baseball managed all these close plays because fans believed that umps were right 99% of the time, and those few errors would even out over a long season.  Baseball wasn't like football or basketball, where subjective refereeing was accepted.  Kobe Bryant gets foul calls lesser players don’t.  The Heat get foul calls the Sacramento Kings don’t.  The refs “swallow the whistle” during the last 30 seconds of a close game because the players should determine the outcome, not the refs (so if a defensive player hits someone on the other team with a crowbar, hey let’s not stop the game for THAT).

Baseball umps were seen as nearly perfect arbitration machines as have ever existed.  It is the only way anyone could have faith in the system over the course of 162 games.  They navigated the dozens of close plays that happened in every games throughout the season, and once the call was made the game could proceed, except on those occasions when some deranged managers decides to entertain the crowd by acting like a lunatic.

But that’s all gone now.  We don’t rely on the utter infallibility of umpires any more.  Almost anything other than ball and strike calls can be challenged.  The play can be reviewed, dissected, analyzed, and the “right” call can be made.  But if the goal is to get every call right, how long will games last?  Right now we limit the number of challenges, but if the important thing is to get every call right, why should there be a limit?  Let’s review every ball down the line, every tag, every catch.  Why have umps?  We can just let the crew in New York ump every game.

ESPN just reported that someone has suggested “speeding up” games by stopping after seven innings.  This can be shrugged off now, but that will become an imperative once unlimited replays are in effect.  Seven inning games?  Why have starters?  Just have three closers pitch two innings each and a fourth to mop up. 

The whole idea behind a 162 game season is that all the close plays that were called wrong would even out in the end.  But that’s not good enough for us these days.  No, we have the technology; we can make baseball slower, more tedious, more correct.  Wake me when we get to 5 hour games.

Baseball functioned when we blithely assumed the umps were competent and honest.  The whole thing about yelling at umps for being blind only worked as a trope because we knew it wasn’t true.  But thanks to slo-mo instant replay, we aren't so sure anymore.  We've been given the gift/curse of knowledge, and now we demand every close play be reviewed by a higher authority at MLB HQ in New York.  Once the door has been opened, once we've been given the knowledge of how to make fire or build nuclear weapons, the genie can’t be put back into the bottle. 

Baseball has survived a lot, but can it survive instant replay?  I guess the Mona Lisa has survived several centuries of art critics.  But I, for one, am worried.