Glenn Younes: MLB - The Past Is Their Future
There are so many unwritten rules in baseball, I'm not sure how anyone keeps track of what to and not to do. Who's feelings to try to not hurt and who to cater to, etc., etc., etc., it makes ones head spin.
Then add in the advent of technology and all of baseball's hell breaks loose.
Replay! What's that? Home runs are checked now, a task that should be easy but never seems to be. I mean come on, the umps leave the field of play, go into the clubhouse, watch on a TV then come back out to reveal who they picked for Pope. We can't come up with a better plan than that? Next year teams get challenge flags? Different amounts depending on the inning? All true. Odd but true.
What kind of forward thinking is this? It's not! It's the same old guard baseball people that are only partially enlightened to what technology can do and even less so qualified to make replay suggestions to the league.
If you want further proof, look at World Series Game 1, where the umpires are being applauded nationwide for "getting it right" with folks saying "give them credit for huddling up and talking to get the call right".
Really? I'm supposed to cheer that an easy, no-doubt-about-it play at second base was called correctly all because the umpires got together and did there job?
Not a chance!
The past, Joe Torre & Tony LaRussa, are the ones dictating the future of replay as head of that department. I'm all for learning from history but when those two were in their prime we didn't have cell phones. Now making calls is the least thing we use our cells for. Technology has past MLB and it's getting more and more obvious. The simple, easy, correct answer is a guy in the booth at baseball stadiums, watching live and correcting mistakes in the flow of the game. That's the way to do things. It's cheap. It can be overseen at MLB.com and move, the all-important, pace of play along.
Until baseball lets go of the past they'll never step into the future.
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