MLB Needs Robots, Infrared ones

First off, for those who saw the Padres Rockies tiebreaker playoff it was obvious that Matt Holliday never touched the plate because his hand was trapped under the catcher's foot (the heel of which was firmly blocking access to the plate). Still, it's a nearly impossible call for the ump to make in real time, and this became much more evident because he delayed the call way longer than usual as if he was waiting for the catcher to apply the tag... and then (in a bizarre 30 frames of video) when nothing happened and Holliday lay there with a face full of dirt he (rather timidly) motioned safe. It was obvious to the TBS announcers that the Ump wasn't sure about the call, and so in Colorado and with the Game potentially over he made the call that seemed most fitting, a call that unfortunately... was wrong.

But I don't blame the ump... as I said before it's a nearly impossible call... and what's more because calling Holliday safe ends the game and the Rockies immediately rush the field there lies even less room for error because the umps can't meet nor can anyone dispute the call. Changing that call after he made it would have been impossible. So we have to go with a flawed call... "meh, it's baseball, the human error is part of the game" -- well, you my friend would be a retard, and probably not a Padres fan. The problem is that the people in charge of Baseball are too stubborn to accept the inevitability of instant replay.

Think about it. Is there a game more suited to instant replay? Is there a game slower, less subject to time constraint than baseball? After all, managers constantly come out and complain about iffy calls, eating up all sorts of time in a showy huff of testosterone and dust kicking that does them no tangible good at all. It's a stupid tradition and only useful for saturday morning 80's style low-budget blooper reels (you gotta love the added cartoon sfx added to those things). Anyway, adding a managerial challenge to baseball would eliminate the need for stupid shit like that and also mean that a manager could actually prevent his team's entire season from being destroyed over one bad call.

Which brings me to my more important argument. The baseball season is 162 games long. How is it conceivable that the MLB would allow a team that had battled for 162 games to have their entire season hinge on a call that everyone watching TV could tell was the wrong one? Sucks to be the Padres... huh? And this isn't the first time that bad calls have been an issue in the playoffs (think Angels/White Sox a few years back where the Angels catcher never really dropped strike 3, and that Jeffrey Maier kid who caught Derek Jeter's "home run" against the Orioles, who Guliani took out to dinner or some stupid shit... fuckin Guliani). The very fact that whether or not a ball is actually a home run or not is rather commonly debated by a group of 4 umps is laughable (it's a home run for christsake, just watch the fuckin replay...) we shouldn't be crossing our fingers that the umps will make the call everyone else can see clearly from their couch. It either went inside the foul pole or didn't, why are we making it this hard.

Anyway, I'm hoping that this will be a moot point by next year and they'll have done the obvious and instituted an instant replay rule... but you never know, the people that preach "old time baseball" are pretty staunch, and have a certain amount of sway... especially considering the fact that no one under 25 actually likes baseball anyway... unfortunately this kind of shit (and the fact that I usually need to tivo-bloop through 2 of the 3 hours of any given game) is why they don't like it.

Just wait until the Red Sox get robbed by a bad playoff call. Then all those same "sanctity-of-the-game" douches who have been Boston bandwagon jumping for the past decade will come out of the woodwork and perhaps finally replay will be instituted.

Here's what I say... eliminate the umps altogether... just use robots and infrared technology to call balls and strikes, and plays at the plate/bags. Just leave one guy out there (and a bunch of booth replay guys) to make calls on the subjective stuff. That way when Ryan Howard strikes out for the 50th time in 3 games he won't be able to bitch any more at the ump for calling strike three... it's strike 3 douche, guard the plate!

That happened in all 3 ninth innings against the Rockies, all 3. Too bad we weren't playing the Padres, huh? Not that it would have made a huge difference I fear, since the Phil's pitching is fairly dreadful but at least those Howard at bats would have mattered a little more.

"Tell it to the infrared robots Ryan, tell it to the robots."