If I may, let me take a break from political commentary and turn to America's pastime, baseball. It's a sport I dearly love. My being from St. Louis and part of America's best fan base only heightens my enthusiastic feelings toward the game.
More than anything, baseball is a game of moments. Little bits and pieces of the game that are captured and remembered for all time. What happened last night when Tiger's pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from completing one of the hardest feats in sports, pitching a perfect game, was a moment that should be a turning point for America's pastime.
After Mike Redmond grounded out to shortstop, Donald bounced a ball between first and second. Miguel Cabrera fielded it and threw to Galarraga covering.
The ball got there in time. So did Galarraga. He seemed to catch the ball near the top of the webbing; perhaps Joyce did not hear the telltale thwack of ball meeting leather before he heard Donald’s foot cross the base. He spread his arms — safe, an infield single.
The botched call being one of the worst many have ever seen. The play beat Donald by a good foot, but Umpire Jim Joyce missed it. It would be easy to demonize Joyce but he actually is extremely upset by the incident and feels sorry for costing the pitcher the perfect game. I can accept that.
As all baseball fans do on every call we disagree with. The line goes that umpires are "only human" or ironically "not perfect". Many fans could except that around the turn of the 20th century, through the 1950's, and even into the 90's. But why in the year 2010 do baseball fans have to put up with horrendous calls like Joyce's Wednesday night?
The solution, simply allow Joyce to take a whole 10 seconds to peak at a monitor and correct his mistake. The story today would be, "Pitcher has perfect game saved by replay". It happens in almost every other sport, why not baseball?
The answer that many who oppose instant replay give is the nostalgic element. That somehow having umpires make mistakes is a unique and special element to baseball that we need not give up. Ridiculous. The reason fans had to deal with it back in the 60's is because replay wasn't existent, much less "instant". Now, it would have taken an umpire a fraction of time to make sure he was right. The convenience is there where it wasn't for over a century.
Another argument is the oddly that the moment last night was bigger because of the botched call, and it will be remembered longer than a simple perfect game. That may be correct, but remembered for what? For the call that was wrong and couldn't be rectified, or more correctly, wouldn't be rectified.
This asinine view that clings to some sick sense of historical precedent, where we play the game like they played it in 1900 because we've got to preserve something about the game. If that were true, baseball in the 40's would have said no to African Americans because it might ruin the "continuity" of the game. Or maybe we should except steroids in baseball to preserve the records those athletes set. Sure, they cheated but cheating is part of the history of the game. Absurd.
We don't have to put up with bad calls anymore. Busch Stadium plays a replay after every hit, why not play one in the rare case when there's a close call. It would be a minor change in the scheme of things and would progress baseball into the 21st century. We're not changing the rules, we're ensuring the rules be enforced correctly and without mistakes. I fail to see the problem with that.
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