Major League Baseball can review Wednesday night’s controversial call that cost Detroit’s Armando Galarraga a perfect game all it wants, but DO NOT overturn umpire Jim Joyce’s muffed call.
I’m all for using video reviews on home runs because the umpires often are unable to get a good look.
But you have to keep the human element in play elsewhere in baseball. It’s one of the main things that makes the game so great.
I don’t understand why blown calls make baseball great. I have seen the ‘human element’ argument before but I don’t understand it. I enjoy the competition. I don’t enjoy blown calls.
I can understand the ‘don’t overturn this because you will have to overturn a lot more in the past too’ (UPDATE: I can see some, however little, reasoning behind it). But ‘don’t take away blown calls, they make baseball great’?
Imagine you pitched 8.2 perfect innings and then due to a Joyce-type blown call you lose the perfect game. And then someone comes to you and says ‘ain’t blown calls fantastic?’. There better not be any bats around!
And something else. If the ‘human element’ is so great then why do you want to take it away using replay?
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I don’t understand the human element bit either, but I also don’t understand the not overturning bad calls. The Brett pine tar homer being taken away was overturned after the fact- and they even had to play the last out of the game after that! It’s not like no calls have been overturned before- the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy that is so ingrained in our minds, though, that it’s hard to ignore. The fact is overturning one call doesn’t mean that every call will be overturned, just like adding instant replay doesn’t mean that they’ll review every single call.
For a call like this one, where even if it is overturned the game is still over and the impact, in terms of other players, is minimal, I see no reason not to overturn it.
Comment by mechanicalTurk — June 3, 2010 @ June 3, 2010 3:57 pm |
yes, I agree that the call should be overturned.
I was just saying I can see some, very little, reasoning behind the ‘past calls’ logic. I can’t see any reasoning at all behind the ‘human element’ logic.
but yes. bud should correct the call.
Comment by The Wizard — June 3, 2010 @ June 3, 2010 7:49 pm |