Very often, making the correct call in baseball is a difficult task. Earlier this season a number of incorrect home run calls led to many quarters calling for instant replay technology in baseball, to ensure complete accuracy of judgemanship.

In a game between the Yankees and Mets on May 17th, Carlos Delgodo, with the baseball scoreboards showing two runners on base, hit a deep drive towards the end of the 4th inning. At first, the umpire ruled that his drive was fair, which resulted in the baseball scoreboards showing a three run homer. However, the plate umpire called a foul. Instant replay technology would have established that it was a legitimate home run, and the plate umpire even admitted this after the game.

Fortunately, this wrong decision did not affect the outcome of the game, but it did give fodder to the proponents of instant replay technology, who consider that there is too much to lose in today’s game to have to rely on the human factor.

Incorrect ball-and-strike calls are much more common, and they can seriously affect the outcome of a game. Such calls can give the advantage to the pitcher or the batter in important moments of the game. As the late umpire Leo Durocher said, it is not right to question the integrity of an umpire, but you can question his eyesight.

Whilst umpires do naturally make some mistakes, they do not do this to a sufficient degree to make instant replay a necessity. Generally, umpires do a good job of calling plays, even though they are sometimes caught out of position. Many people agree that there will probably be a time when instant replay technology is employed in certain instances, such as home run calls, but baseball purists worry that it would seriously interrupt the flow of the games.

Baseball needs the opposite to occur – and moves are being made to speed the game up. One suggestion is to allow the plate umpire to punish batters with an automatic strike who slowly wonder out of the box between pitches. Another suggestion is to make pitchers, in base empty situations, pitch within a 12 second time limit. The punishment for going over this limit would be a ball.

Instant replay would in this respect be counterproductive, and would prolong each game. It would take out the human element from baseball, which has been part of the game since its inception. Controversy is part of the fun! In any case, ultimately, umpire mistakes even out for everybody, so through the law of averages no team really loses out. The game should be left as it is. It is family entertainment at its best, and the less sanitized it becomes the better.

For more information in instant replays, go to:
wikipedia.org