Purists may cry that baseball is being harmed by the introduction of video replay to the game.
I contend that this is something that was inevitable and will help insure that the correct calls are made.
Football, hockey, and basketball have been using replays to get the right calls for years. How many of us are complaining about that? While some extreme cases have come up (I'm speaking to you, Ed Hochuli), taking a second look at a play has provided the correct result.
And history has shown that using a replay could have changed a result (example No. 1: Jeffrey Maier, pictured above).
Throughout the years, baseball has adapted to the time period, and it's only right that baseball use the available technology to improve the game.
Can this be taken too far? Absolutely. Football has rules regarding what can and can't be looked at so that there's still some referee interpretation.
Baseball already has similar rules in place that say when replay can be used. This is the way it should stay.
I can see the purists' worries about these rules being expanded to include a vast array of calls in a baseball game. On this, I agree.
We can't allow replay to overtake the role of the umpires. If every strike or ball is contested by a team demanding a replay, we might as well not have umpires and just let cameras and computers determine these outcomes.
As long as video replays are restricted to their current rules, I believe this will be a good thing for the game. We've already seen that some wrong calls have been overturned and some tough ones have been confirmed by the use of replays.
Baseball has a certain culture and it's important that this culture be damaged as little as possible through history.
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