Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports has an update on how Major League Baseball is in no rush to expand instant replay. In the article, Morosi has a few quotes from Joe Torre, who supervises the umpires for baseball. What really stood out to me was the following line from Torre:
“(Instant replay) has been good for us, but I really haven’t seen technology that would make us much better than we are right now. Would we get some more calls right? Sure.”
Apparently the MLB commissioner’s office is full of Pentium II computers running Windows 95 and connecting to the internet using dial up. That’s the only way they wouldn’t have the technology that would make instant replay better. I can sit at home and get a clear replay of what happened in a game, while watching baseball on my phone. Think about that. We have the technology for people to watch live baseball on their phones in the middle of a grocery store, but baseball is saying they don’t have the technology to expand instant replay?
As for the second part, Torre points out that they’d get more calls right. That’s all the reason you need to expand replay. And if you’re admitting that you’re getting more calls right, then you’re also kind of saying that you could get better than where you are right now.
It’s hard to imagine that every sports league has instant replay, but MLB is suggesting that they don’t have the technology to go the same route. Of course, this paragraph by Morosi explains it all.
The key, Torre said, is to “make the game better without dragging it on.” So, accuracy isn’t Torre’s only concern. It’s efficiency, too.
And there it is. Baseball would rather battle the misconception that the game is slow, rather than get the calls right. The concept of the game being slow never made sense, as the game is actually faster than the average football game. It’s rare for a football game to go under three hours. It’s rare for a baseball game to go over three hours. The people who don’t watch baseball because they think it is slow are pretty much just not watching because they don’t like baseball. So rather than appeasing the people who do watch baseball, MLB is sacrificing the accuracy of the game to try and draw in those people who don’t watch the game because they feel that two and a half hours of baseball is slow, while three and a half hours of football is fast.
