There’s something of a media-driven furor for instant replay in baseball.
Over the course of a wide-ranging conversation I had with some friends last week,
one of the more benign discussions we had was on how instant replay could be faithfully implemented in baseball. My proposal was well received.
For instant replay to work in baseball, it needs to be:
- Seldom used
- Only used when no umpire ought to be ideally positioned to make the call
- Fast
My proposal is that instant replay can only be invoked when the umpires all get together to discuss a play. If two or more umpires disagree about how a play went down during one of these fairly rare umpire conferences, they should be able to invoke a “fifth umpire” who is really three umpires sitting in an office at MLB headquarters. When called upon, those three umpires are required to review the video feed and make a definitive ruling, siding with one field umpire or the other. It’ll be the crew chief’s responsibility to relate the issue to the fifth umpire impartially.
The real beauty in my proposal though is meant to make such fifth umpire invocations rare. I want the umpires to wear special rings that, when touched, open up a communication channel to the fifth umpire. The crew would have to meet up, disagree, and then agree to touch rings, a la Wonder Twins, Activate!!! in order to get the decision right. That’d keep Blue focused.
While searching for that wonder twins clip, I found a pretty hilarious, yet highly obscene video that you can access via the period at the end of this sentence.