Instant Replay This Instant!

Last Saturday's Ravens-Titans game provided another reminder of why baseball needs instant replay (all sports, but I care about baseball). On their final drive with the score tied, the Ravens let the play clock wind down to zero, where it stayed for about two seconds before Quarterback Joe Flacco finally took the snap and completed a [pretty large number]-yard pass for a first down. Ultimately it led to a long field goal--and win--that wouldn't have happened if the refs had done their job and thrown a penalty flag.

"But it's part of the game." Right. That's the problem, not a rationale for refusing to fix it. There is nothing good or romantic about umpires' blowing ball-strike calls, and if we can find a way to eliminate that from baseball, we must implement it. For those obsessed with keeping a "human element" in the game, there's plenty of that--from players. The difference is it's fair to penalize a team for the mistakes of its players. I include myself among those who think gaffes in general can enrich a sport's unfolding narrative and add intrigue to a game, but let's remember that sports history is chock full of such goats who provide this added dramatic component. Bill Buckner. Chris Weber. Fred Merkle and his enormous boner. Mickey Owen. Nick Anderson. Allowing refs/umps to contribute their malfeasances as well is too much of a [arguably] good thing.

"But if we implement corrective technology for ball-strike calls, where do we draw the line?" For the record, slippery slope arguments are never good. George Will: "Political life is lived on a slippery slope." Like, when does police power become authoritarianism. But not just in politics. Every decision that's ever been made, in any domain, was made on a "slope"; calling that slope slippery doesn't make the decision bad. Just because you can't pinpoint an exact cutoff point on some continuum of ideas doesn't mean that you can't be absolutely sure that a particular idea falls clearly on one side or the other of that theoretical cutoff point. "If courts allow men to marry other men, maybe some day courts will allow men to marry leaves." Maybe. If someone can eventually formulate a logical argument for why men should be allowed to marry leaves, kol hakavod, but let's worry about that then. (That's an example, not an endorsement.) In no arena other than umpiring do we consider arbitrariness desirable. C'mon people.