Omar Infante was out. Umpire Jeff Nelson blew the call.
In the eighth inning of game two, Detroit’s Infante overran second base, Yankee right fielder Nick Swisher fired a lazer to second basemen Robinson Cano, who applied the tag before Infante could reach the bag.
He was clearly out, yet Nelson called him safe. The Tigers put two more runs on the board and won the game.
Yankee Manager Joe Giradi was irate and now he wants instant replay in baseball. So do Tony Gywnn, Earl Weaver, and Jim Bunning, all baseball legends.
It is safe to say these Hall of Famers and Girardi love baseball, but instituting any form of instant replay would remove the human element out of the game and undermine its rich tradition.
A major league baseball park is the most organic of all fields of play. From the green monster to the ivy on Wrigley field’s outfield fence, it’s a living, breathing domain. There are elements of a park that work for the home team and against the away team; short porches, mile-high thin air, white dome ceilings, or just a misplaced stone in the dirt that causes a groundball to ricochet. In a ball park things aren’t always perfectly fair, or right. They are nuanced.
Fans, players, and umpires are the same way.
Fans reach onto the field. Sometimes they even ruin a team’s chance to make it to the World Series and break a 100-year-old curse (cough-Steve-Barton-cough). They boo about good calls and cheer for bad ones.
Players yell and smash bats because pitches are less than an inch out of the strike zone. Coaches throw bases, kick dirt, and spit in umpires’ faces if only to fire up the boys.
The umpires are the most neutral element of the game, and they’re still not completely objective. Legendary pitcher Bob Gibson has countless stories about “showing up” an umpire and suddenly not getting the corners, strikes on the edge plate.
So what does all this have to do with instant replay? Instant replay means bringing in a machine — a computer onto a field meant for men; men like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Pete Rose. If you take the human element out of baseball, you remove the character and suddenly, it’s not quite as special.
Proponents of instant replay say we should send umpires to the camera once, twice, three times a game for the “big calls,” the ones that matter. But in baseball, every play depends on the umpire’s judgment, and every play affects the outcome of the game.
Say an ump makes a bad call on a 1-1 count. Suddenly it’s 2-1. It’s a hitter’s count and the batter’s swinging. The game is full of these scenarios.
Infante may have been on the receiving end of bad call, but the Tiger know the bitter taste of a blown call themselves.
In 2010, Armando Galarraga lost the first perfect game in Tiger history after umpire Jim Joyce made the wrong call. Joyce apologized after the game, but it was too late to do anything.
Despite having just been robbed of Tiger immortality, Galarraga accepted the apology.
“No one’s perfect,” he said.
Umpires aren’t perfect. Neither are the players, the fans, or the ballparks. The game is human, and it is perfectly flawed, just as it has always been and should always stay.
