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10-20-2005, 01:56 PM
Collier: One vote against replays
Thursday, October 20, 2005
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Yes was absolutely pounding No this week in an MSNBC poll asking Internet users if they wanted instant replay to settle baseball disputes, with nearly 70 percent effectively figuring that, while everybody makes mistakes, technology is infallible.
This is why your car never breaks down, your computer system never crashes and the Super Bowl halftime show never veers anywhere close to an embarrassing moment.
But I'm through arguing against the use of replay to help officials, just as I'm through complaining that the use of replay for purposes other than its original intent -- to re-examine the genius of Navy quarterback Roger Staubach scrambling against Army in 1963. Replay has become limitless, and hence one of the most annoying technological phenomena in a culture laced with same.
At least, I'll be through with those arguments by the end of this column.
The anti-replay argument is almost strictly the purview of the terminally cranky or many of the same technophobes who are constantly trying to un-ring the technological bell, who'd have us put our hands up, drop our cell phones, kick our raspberries into the sewer and crawl in after them.
But before the rhetorical position inevitably disappears, let's give it its intellectual due, if you will.
It is most simply stated in this only semi-rhetorical question: Why, in a human endeavor like baseball or football, in which the outcome invariably turns on one or more mistakes by one or more people, do we expect and even insist that the arbiters be mistake-free?
Take the instance of poor Doug Eddings, who somehow got blamed for beating the Los Angeles Angels of Central Orange County in Chapter 2 of the American League Championship Series last week. When the Chicago White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski wound up on first base after being struck out by Kelvim Escobar for what appeared to be the final out, the White Sox won the game, and Eddings, the home-plate umpire, was, by media fiat, shoved into the game's ignominious dungeon with others who've supposedly made history-altering mistakes.
This is, like it not, twaddle.
Two out and one on in a tie game in the ninth does not a loss make. What of the immediately subsequent mistakes of Mr. Escobar, who ignored pinch-runner Pablo Ozuna to the unconscionable extent that Ozuna stole second without a throw, then slopped up some alleged slider to Joe Crede, who spanked it into the left-field corner to score the winning run? That's why the Angels lost, or if it's not, it's a much more likely reason than anything involving Eddings.
Had the Angels been allowed to issue a replay challenge, they way NFL coaches can, you would hope the available technologies would have included one shot Fox had that had been blown up, which showed the pitch from Escobar changing directions inside Josh Paul's glove, presumably after hitting the ground, meaning that Eddings was right or that Escobar has developed a new pitch that does the opposite of what a forkball does. It goes up. Perhaps that's his spoon ball.
Fortunately, baseball allows no such nonsense as a technological delay so that everyone can concentrate on six or seven or eight different versions of one potential mistake that usually does not affect the outcome anywhere close to the degree by which the other 1,000 mistakes being made concurrently do.
From an entertainment standpoint, the argument is much better theater than a zebra taking in a peep show, but the larger point is this: Victory is a matter of outperforming many elements not fully encompassed by the opposition. It's outperforming the opponent, the weather, your own apprehensions and self-doubt, and, in no insignificant measure, the umpires or officials. You've got to play past all of that. If you don't, you don't deserve to win. Replay is the crutch of people who can't come to terms with this.
Despite what you've read and heard, replay as recourse is not inevitable in baseball. It's not the agenda for the meetings next month in Palm Springs, Calif., and, when it was discussed during the offseason last year, only half the game's general managers wanted it considered on even a limited basis.
As an officiating tool, replay's benefits are dubious at best, but as a video phenomenon, replay has reached the level of proliferation where it's sometimes hard to separate the replays from the game. I don't need three or four looks at a ground single to left, much less a speeded-up look at the eight-pitch sequence that led to it, just as I don't appreciate that fourth look at a 6-yard swing pass of no particular consequence.
Albert Pujols' titanic Game 5 homer was worth a few savorings, if only to emphasize how unlikely it was that the brilliant Astros reliever Brad Lidge could make that kind of mistake. It's a useful reminder that mistakes, even by the severely accomplished, are inevitable. Let's not make them unforgivable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)
Thursday, October 20, 2005
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Yes was absolutely pounding No this week in an MSNBC poll asking Internet users if they wanted instant replay to settle baseball disputes, with nearly 70 percent effectively figuring that, while everybody makes mistakes, technology is infallible.
This is why your car never breaks down, your computer system never crashes and the Super Bowl halftime show never veers anywhere close to an embarrassing moment.
But I'm through arguing against the use of replay to help officials, just as I'm through complaining that the use of replay for purposes other than its original intent -- to re-examine the genius of Navy quarterback Roger Staubach scrambling against Army in 1963. Replay has become limitless, and hence one of the most annoying technological phenomena in a culture laced with same.
At least, I'll be through with those arguments by the end of this column.
The anti-replay argument is almost strictly the purview of the terminally cranky or many of the same technophobes who are constantly trying to un-ring the technological bell, who'd have us put our hands up, drop our cell phones, kick our raspberries into the sewer and crawl in after them.
But before the rhetorical position inevitably disappears, let's give it its intellectual due, if you will.
It is most simply stated in this only semi-rhetorical question: Why, in a human endeavor like baseball or football, in which the outcome invariably turns on one or more mistakes by one or more people, do we expect and even insist that the arbiters be mistake-free?
Take the instance of poor Doug Eddings, who somehow got blamed for beating the Los Angeles Angels of Central Orange County in Chapter 2 of the American League Championship Series last week. When the Chicago White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski wound up on first base after being struck out by Kelvim Escobar for what appeared to be the final out, the White Sox won the game, and Eddings, the home-plate umpire, was, by media fiat, shoved into the game's ignominious dungeon with others who've supposedly made history-altering mistakes.
This is, like it not, twaddle.
Two out and one on in a tie game in the ninth does not a loss make. What of the immediately subsequent mistakes of Mr. Escobar, who ignored pinch-runner Pablo Ozuna to the unconscionable extent that Ozuna stole second without a throw, then slopped up some alleged slider to Joe Crede, who spanked it into the left-field corner to score the winning run? That's why the Angels lost, or if it's not, it's a much more likely reason than anything involving Eddings.
Had the Angels been allowed to issue a replay challenge, they way NFL coaches can, you would hope the available technologies would have included one shot Fox had that had been blown up, which showed the pitch from Escobar changing directions inside Josh Paul's glove, presumably after hitting the ground, meaning that Eddings was right or that Escobar has developed a new pitch that does the opposite of what a forkball does. It goes up. Perhaps that's his spoon ball.
Fortunately, baseball allows no such nonsense as a technological delay so that everyone can concentrate on six or seven or eight different versions of one potential mistake that usually does not affect the outcome anywhere close to the degree by which the other 1,000 mistakes being made concurrently do.
From an entertainment standpoint, the argument is much better theater than a zebra taking in a peep show, but the larger point is this: Victory is a matter of outperforming many elements not fully encompassed by the opposition. It's outperforming the opponent, the weather, your own apprehensions and self-doubt, and, in no insignificant measure, the umpires or officials. You've got to play past all of that. If you don't, you don't deserve to win. Replay is the crutch of people who can't come to terms with this.
Despite what you've read and heard, replay as recourse is not inevitable in baseball. It's not the agenda for the meetings next month in Palm Springs, Calif., and, when it was discussed during the offseason last year, only half the game's general managers wanted it considered on even a limited basis.
As an officiating tool, replay's benefits are dubious at best, but as a video phenomenon, replay has reached the level of proliferation where it's sometimes hard to separate the replays from the game. I don't need three or four looks at a ground single to left, much less a speeded-up look at the eight-pitch sequence that led to it, just as I don't appreciate that fourth look at a 6-yard swing pass of no particular consequence.
Albert Pujols' titanic Game 5 homer was worth a few savorings, if only to emphasize how unlikely it was that the brilliant Astros reliever Brad Lidge could make that kind of mistake. It's a useful reminder that mistakes, even by the severely accomplished, are inevitable. Let's not make them unforgivable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)