And when you start enforcing the rules to the letter of the law after not doing so previously, you end up with Merkle’s Boner.
It’s not *completely *pointless; consistency has inherent value, especially in a sport like baseball which prizes tradition above all else. For instance, I can see where you’re coming from re: takeout slides, and I suppose I even agree with you, but since I only care a tiny bit, I would actually prefer to continue to allow them, for the sake of tradition.
As for phantom double-plays, while it would *probably *be better to call it by the book, I’m not particularly bothered by the status quo. This is not because of tradition, however, but because it would be a devilishly hard call to get right. The SS is flying by the bag, and as his foot glides by it may or may not actually touch, and if it touches it may or may not break contact before he actually catches the ball, and in any case the umpire is as likely as not to be on the far side of the bag and therefore unable to see what’s happening with the fielder’s foot, and even if he does have a view it’s (by it’s very nature) a bang/bang play that he’ll blow a large percentage of the time. If you enforce the rule strictly, the umpires will get it wrong almost as often as they get it right, which leads to inequity. Conversely (and ironically), if you have a looser, non-literal standard in which anything in the neighborhood is an out and the umps use their discretion to determine which few instances are too far out of bounds, you wind up with more consistent and more “correct” officiating, and therefore a fairer game.
Obviously this concern doesn’t necessarily trump other factors involved in the debate, nor is it applicable in equal measure to other, somewhat similar situations.
Instant replay!
Please God, no.
To what does this refer?
Does anyone else notice the eerie similarity between baseball’s rules and the British constitution?
I would like to see strict enforcement of the rules, supported by instant replay.
Instant replay is not generally supportable in baseball because of the force play – getting a guy out on the bases (or catching a ball in the air vs. on the bounce) changes what you need to do to get out another guy elsewhere on the bases – during the same play, and before there’s any break in the action.
It’s not like football where things happen, and then you have as much time as you’re willing to take to decide what exactly did happen. Basketball has a similar problem because the action is constant, but the officials can stop it when needed and then return the action to something like the state it was in before the whistle. But in baseball, the runner between third and home’s status can change depending on what happens behind him on the basepath, and there’s no opportunity to revisit the call at second before the play at home is contested.
Obviously, there are situations in which this isn’t an issue (the limited replay on home runs is the obvious exception).
–Cliffy
I think it was Game 1 of the 1999 ALCS between the Yankees and Red Sox; and it may have been a play in the top of the 10th inning, but Baseball-Reference is telling me that Derek Jeter was the relay guy on the 1-6-3. I do remember that the Yankee fielder never came close to touching second at all, yet the Red Sox runner was still called out. The Yankees won the game in the bottom of the 10th with Bernie Williams leading it off with a homer off Rod Beck.
I’m not understanding your distinction between baseball and football. In what way is baseball different from “things happen, and then you have as much time as you’re willing to take to decide what exactly did happen”? I understood your example, but football is chock full of conditional status and instant replay doesn’t seem to be a problem. One quick example: If the QB rolls out of the pocket, DBs are allowed to “block” (interfere with) their assigned receivers since this may actually be a running (QB scramble) play.
If it’s not just conditional rules that you mean but rather sequential events in a domino-effect, consider an interception return that gets fumbled back to the offense where both the interception and fumble are questionable.
Fair enough. But if the apparent interception (or the fumble) weren’t valid, the ball would have been down, yes? So you can run the play based on the assumption that the interception was real, and then afterwards decide if it was or it wasn’t.
For the baseball example I was thinking about, assume the bases are loaded. The batter hits the ball over the shortstop’s head and the left fielder, running in towards the play, makes a diving catch and snags the ball right at the ground. Is it in the glove, in which case there’s no force, but the runners have to tag up if they want to proceed? Or is off the bounce, in which case the force is still on, but the runners are free to advance from wherever they stand? The players (on both teams) have to know the answer immediately because it completely changes their obligations and their tactics. So the ump makes the call, and there’s no fair way to revise that call later, even if it’s in error.
I admit I don’t know football well enough – maybe stuff like this does happen. But the examples you list don’t seem to be apposite. In the pocket example, does the ref signal that the QB is out of the pocket? If not, then it’s up to the defensive back to decide whether to risk possible interference calls in order to block their man. That’s not the same situation to my eyes.
That said, for some reason I’m a little more willing to accept replay in limited situations today than I was when I wrote that post yesterday afternoon.
–Cliffy
Yes, there are a few situations where, as you say, both teams’ actions depend on an immediate call from the umpire and it wouldn’t be fair to overturn the umpire’s decision or erase the whole play after the fact. But in such cases, given that the umpire does make an immediate call, and both teams do react on the basis of that, there’s not going to be much pressure to make any change. A TV replay might occasionally show that this call was an error, but we already live with that.
For most calls, however, there is not really such difficulty. Bringing it back to the phantom double play, suppose one out, runner on first. Umpire calls the out at second. Shortstop throws to first to complete what the defensive team thinks is a double play to end the inning. Offensive team’s manager challenges the call (under a system where each manager has an allotment of challenges), or maybe the umpire crew’s man in the video room sees the TV angle which shows SS’s foot off the bag when he receives the ball from the 2B. Umpires on the field take another look, and sure enough, the runner should have been called safe. They announce the change–two out, runner at second, inning continues. The right call. The integrity of the game is upheld.
Don’t we want that, as far as is practical? I sure do.
I don’t even see the problem with simply running the play over. The NFL does this without a care in the world whenever there is an inadvertant whistle.
As for how baseball should implement replay, I think the NFL has demonstrated a workable system: two challenges per team, with one extra if both your challenges were successful.
Yeah, this is true.
Oh dear. I think this would be a huge problem. It would change the way the game is played in a big way. I don’t mind the phantom double play, but that isn’t the point. ISTM that if replay changes not the validity of calls, but how the rules are actually interpreted, then it’s failed. I mean, you might dislike the phantom play, but if so, then you need to lobby for it to be changed – it’s not a mistake, it’s a umpiring policy you disagree with. Replay shouldn’t be used to back door a change in the way the game is played.
Diff’rent strokes I guess. Baeball isn’t a game where you do stuff like that – and IMO it’s not fair to do stuff like that.
I find football unwatchable because of replay – and not just replay, but the nature of how calls are made. Whenever anything exciting happens, you just have to sit there on tenterhooks to see if they’re going to call it back. That doesn’t happen in baseball, and I think that’s a big advantage baseball has.
Also, it would also add time to the game, which people complain about quite a bit already.
–Cliffy
Actually, it would be offensive interference.
There’s a good discussion of the “neighborhood play” at Wiki. Note the last paragraph:
And that harks back to my OP & the various posters who’ve agreed with me. Choosing to umpire by an unwritten set of non-standardized rules is bloody stupid & an invitation to protests & dissention.
Call the rules EXACTLY as written. *If *that produces a hardship in the game, the league, the owners, and the players union will come up with a rule change. Then enforce THAT to the letter.
Imagine for a minute the official rule book had one blank rule in there. Number 4.17.a just said: “We’ll tell you if you violate it.” That wouldn’t fly with the players, the owners, the punditocracy, or the fans.
Yet that’s exactly the situation MLB has backed itself into.
I agree.
I suppose, in the context of the present discussion, I should have said that the first thing needed is a league directive to umpires to enforce the forceout rule as written, for double-play situations at second base as for all force situations at all bases.
There are some other directives to umpires, also not involving rule changes, that could be issued as well–call the high strike, don’t grant “time” to batters once they’re in the box except in exceptional circumstances.
We got the idea of replay mixed into this, but that’s really a separate issue. I do think replay should be expanded to cover as many situations as can practically and fairly be covered (and I believe that includes most safe/out calls in the field).