All you have to do is watch last night’s Detroit Tiger game to see why baseball needs to introduce instant replay fulltime at every game.
Everyone at the ball park was going crazy as the last out is being made. Except for one slight problem, the umpire inexplicably makes the wrong call and cost the pitcher a perfect game.
Considering the situation, you might have thought that even if the play was closer than it was (the guy was out by a mile) the umpire still might have given the call to Detroit, but he didn’t. Now because of this bad call the pitcher cannot say that he pitched a perfect game. The players cannot say that they played on the team of someone who pitched a perfect game and the fans cannot say they attended a perfect game.
This play could have been rectified in minutes if MLB allowed instant replay to be used at every game. Wait a minute! They do use instant replay at every game but only for home runs. Common sense would tell you that baseball is made up of more plays then just home runs. It consists of single, doubles, outs and double plays, etc…these plays have just as much bearing on the outcome of a game as home runs do! A bad call on a run scoring double should be more important than a solo shot in a 6-0 game.
How do we fix this rule without having to replay every single call? You give each team 2 replays a game that can use on any play during the game. If the team that called for the replay was right, they would not lose that one of their two replay reviews. By instituting this rule it would also eliminate most of the arguments between umpires and managers as they would easily be able settle any dispute in a matter of minutes.
All in all, there is no downside! The game is not slowed down anymore than it already is, a blown call will be rectified quickly and perfect games would be perfect games!
