Play It Again

In a recent piece from Slate, Josh Levin, presenting an argument for the eradication of umpires, asks the following question:

"If it's objective truth we're after, why should the one guy who isn't watching in slo-mo have any say at all, much less the last word?"

I'm not prepared to argue for the end of the umpire in Major League Baseball, although that sentence makes so much sense it makes me want to cry. However, I am prepared to argue for what Levin is really advocating (even he recognizes we can never fully eliminate the umpire): the use of video and video replay as an officiating aid in pretty much every situation possible.

I've argued this before, including in my most recent, exasperated post. My work clearly isn't done, as long as people are still writing things like this, but I'd at least like to make an effort to avoid repeating myself. Thus, instead of arguing FOR the use of replay, I'm going to discuss/eviscerate a couple of common counterarguments.

HOLISTIC FALLACY: This one can be classified as some variant of the phrase, "The human error inherent in umpiring is part of the game." As an example, read the second paragraph in that link above. It makes me nauseous, because it's dependent on the idea that baseball is one whole and all of its elements are inseparable, and that's just not true; it is one hundred percent within our power to change one part of the game while leaving the rest alone. Don't like the fact that we can only play baseball during the day? Boom, we just installed lights. The rest of the game remains the same. Don't like the fact that bad calls are being made all over the place? Here, here's a video replay monitor. We'll use it to get things right, and at all other times--I promise--you'll forget it's there.

So, the question really becomes, both for that particular NYT columnist as well as those who agree with him: do you like it when an epicly huge call is blown? Is that a specific part of baseball you want to keep? Note that my question is not: do you like baseball, a part of which is the fact that epicly huge calls are sometimes blown. My question is: do you like when the calls are blown? Because we can keep all that good, old-timey, peanuts-and-cracker-jack baseball essence and just get rid of the bad calls, or at least a good amount of them. This is entirely possible and has been for quite some time. And if we really do want to hang on to everything that's been a part of the game, then a lot of ballplayers aren't going to be thrilled to hear that they've been resegregated back to the Negro Leagues. You can tell them. I don't wanna.

DEFEATISM: This one goes something like this: we can never eliminate human error entirely, since there will always be borderline balk calls, tag plays at the bases/home plate, etc., so why even try? There's no other way to describe this than the way I've labeled it: defeatism. We'll never be perfect, so there's no sense in striving to be better than we are. Hear that, Joe Mauer? You'll never get on base 100% of the time, so you might as well blow off the batting cages. There's no point in doing the best we can--even though we can do a hell of a lot better than we already are--because there will always be flaws. Human production and improvement grinds to a halt under this system of thinking, so I'd rather avoid it as the basis for how we should run baseball.

THE ADDITION-WITHOUT-SUBTRACTION FALLACY: The games are already too darn long! This one ends up being a variation of defeatism; replay would make games take longer (debatable, but fine, I'll grant it for the purposes of the conversation), so, I guess we're sunk, because we'll never find a way to make it shorter again.

Let's have a little optimism, people! There are plenty of things we can do to make games shorter, if that's your concern. Personally, I'm fine with how the games are now, as well as how long they would be if you added in a little time for replay. But if you're worried, know this: in the Red Sox-A's game I watched yesterday, the announcers mentioned that because the A's reliever in the bullpen hadn't started warming up early enough, the current pitcher might just throw over to first base a bunch of times until he was ready. And your problem is that we might take a little time to get the calls right? Let's start with things like banning Jorge Posada from visiting the mound eight times in an inning, and I promise you, we'll have time for all the replays we want to watch.

SLIPPERY SLOPE: The argument I kept hearing in the hours after Jim Joyce's Portrait Of The Umpire As A Flawed Officiator (that's right, guys, this post is getting this blog's first 'Irish literature' label. I'm back with a vengeance. Deal with it.) was that it would be criminal for Bud Selig to step in to overturn the call, because: what would happen the next time there was a blown game-ending call? Things would go crazy! The system will collapse! We'll have an army of laser-equipped QuesTec 3000 robot umpires running amok by the year 2017!

A few things on this one. First, I agree that it's not ideal for Bud Selig to step in and change things (and how awesome would it be if we used in-game replay review so he never had to?). But, God, is it so awful if he changes things so they're right? If a play that millions of fans know is an out is changed to an out, that is to the detriment of humanity how, exactly? And if it happens again (even--or especially--in the World Series, as the NYT column suggests), and we still don't have a better system in place to deal with it because of stubborn anti-replay advocates, then please, Bud, step in and change it. Save us from ourselves.

Secondly: I don't like slippery slope arguments, because they entirely undersell human self-control. If Bud wants to change this one call because it was a perfect game and we all know it, but next time something comes up, he wants to say, "Screw you all, that was different, I'm not doing it again," it is entirely within his power to do that. Similarly, if we want to say that replay is for boundary calls only and we never want to expand it, then we get to decide not to expand it. It's as simple as that. And if we find that we do want Bud to correct a call the next time around, or we do want to use replay in more situations, then that means we've decided willingly to take the next step down the slope. We haven't fallen off a precipice, we've just taken the next step.

See how that works? For the most part, you only slide down a slippery slope because you want to. We're not suddenly going to find ourselves reviewing more and more plays, or introducing more and more technology into baseball, against our will. Either we won't do it, or (hopefully) we'll slide down that slope and embrace the future because we realized that the top of the hill was ridiculously behind the times. Guys, I've slid down, and it's wonderful down here. Please, please join me.