On Thursday night, August 5th, the two-time defending National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies snatched a victory from the Florida Marlins with the help of umpire Bob Davidson. In the bottom of the ninth inning Marlins first baseman Gaby Sanchez scorched a ball down the third base line that hopped over the bag and landed in play: it would have driven in Hanley Ramirez from second base and won the game for Florida.
Had the ball been ruled fair the Phillies road to a third-straight World Series trip would have become more difficult. However Davidson called the ball foul and the Marlins were unable to score in the inning, giving the Phillies an opportunity to steal the game that they promptly took. Replays showed conclusively that the ball was fair, but even in the face of the evidence Davidson refused to admit that he had made the incorrect call.
Technology and Human Error
The outcry from baseball fans for instant replay grew louder after Davidson’s miscue, but it was just another chapter of a season that will be remembered as much for the failures of umpires as for the success of teams and players. Most infamously, umpire James Joyce blew the final call of what would have been a perfect game for Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga. There have never been three perfect games in a single season in the history of Major League Baseball, but Galaragga’s would not only have been the third of 2010, all three would have occurred in under a month. History (the only other season in MLB's past with even two perfect games was 1880) went unmade not due to the mistake of a player, but because of the gaffe of an umpire.
With the technology that allows fans to watch sports continuing to get better, viewers now have the ability to see replays in ultra slow motion, while the officials see the action in real time and must make a decision immediately. Cameras are gaining new capabilities all the time and there are now more of them at games so that the views available to fans at home are almost limitless, and they know right away if the umpire got the call wrong or not. The result is that a growing number of baseball’s devotees are calling for the expansion of instant replay. Replay is already used in order for umps to judge whether or not a player hit a home run, but many want more: they want the process to determine if a ball is fair or foul, and to use it to resolve many other things except for balls and strikes.
Not Just Baseball’s Problem
MLB is not the only league facing issues over the performance of its officials. The National Football League has had many ordeals of its own. Even Super Bowls are subject to mistakes despite the fact that the NFL always selects what it considers to be its best referees for the occasion. In fact, a referee just came forward to say that he believed he had made grave errors during Super Bowl XL that may have cost the Seattle Seahawks the game, and handed the trophy to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The NFL has a system where each team receives a certain number of replay challenges that may be used throughout the course of the game. The system is imperfect and some plays cannot be reviewed, but it is a step in the direction that fans seem to desire.
In the National Basketball Association the officiating has been so bad at times that many believe the refs are involved in a conspiracy. Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy came out with allegations that his colleagues bet on games and have worked to fix some of them. Even the FIFA World Cup recently had its share of controversial moments.
Tradition vs. Progress
The major barrier to progress in baseball and other sports is the reliance on tradition. Some believe that since people called the games in the past without any cameras to help them, things should not change now. They believe that the mistakes of human beings makes sports better than they would be with flawless officiating, while others think that the only ones that need to be human are the players, and that if the games could be monitored by impartial robots it should be done.
There currently are no perfect androids to watch over sports, but there is the ability to get improved accuracy in officiating with the use of instant replay and other techniques. To refuse to make use of the tools that are currently in place to make the calling of games more exact is to willingly ignore progress. The majority of fans today desire games to be called as authentically as possible, and leaving that authenticity on the table in order to preserve “tradition” is a mistake that may cost baseball and other sports dearly.
Heath Lenoble - My favorite topics to write about are history, sports, and politics, but I love film as well.
