Selig and friends see no evil
According to published reports, Major League baseball’s general managers did not even propose a vote on possibly expanding instant replay for 2010 at their meetings this week in Chicago.
Commissioner Bud Selig is openly opposed to expanding instant replay, and apparently the GMs bowed to his whim. Said Selig: “I think my position has been clear. This is a game of pace. I’m worried a lot about that.”
If the commissioner is worried so much about pace, perhaps he should have his umpires enforce the on field pace rules such as how much time pitchers can take between pitches. Was he worried about pace when Jose Molina was killing the grass between home plate and the pitchers mound this post season? Does he worry about pace while batters are busy wiping out the lines that define the box in which they stand? If he’s so worried about pace he could just eliminate the DH. American League games take longer perhaps due to the presence of a ninth hitter as opposed to a pitcher batting.
I believe the commissioner should be far more concerned with getting calls right than with pace. I don’t have an official listing of blown calls on hand, but the New York Post compiled a few and I have to believe anyone reading this can think of at least one example.
That baseball would so casually refuse to even discuss the possibility of getting some help in an area in which they so clearly need it is alarming. Unfortunately, their call on this is not reviewable.
7 comments
Kingman 26
11/11/2009-4:06pm at 4:06 pm (UTC -4)
Nice work Grave, and this all definitely continues to keep baseball a few centuries behind the NFL and NBA in terms of just about everything.
Pace of the game? How about eliminating batters calling timeout when pitchers are about to throw, for one.
Why not have a challenge system like the NFL, where many kinds of plays can be challenged, but you only get a couple a game?
GravediggerHebner
11/11/2009-4:19pm at 4:19 pm (UTC -4)
Whatever system, however implemented, that they wouldn’t even vote on the possibility disturbs me.
Kingman 26
11/11/2009-4:30pm at 4:30 pm (UTC -4)
Yeah, very strange to not even make a show of discussing/debating it after the debacle that was umpiring in the playoffs.
But the 1985 World Series basically turned on and was decided to a large degree by one clearly blown call. My guess would be that baseball’s higher-ups would say to that fact: “So??”
rustyjr
11/11/2009-4:31pm at 4:31 pm (UTC -4)
well bud is a puppet for the owners – maybe they like the umpires being shown as a militia of keystone kops
Kingman 26
11/11/2009-4:50pm at 4:50 pm (UTC -4)
Yes sir, Bud is a hand puppet comfortably worn by the Steinbrenner family for the most part.
gipperpdx
11/11/2009-4:39pm at 4:39 pm (UTC -4)
The NFL system – 3 challenges a game sort of thing, and if you are wrong, it costs you something is the only way it would work. Cant have challenges for every safe/out close call. Games would be 8 hours long.
Amen to ditching the DH though. Not gonna happen…but Amen!
metsfan4decades
11/12/2009-8:50am at 8:50 am (UTC -4)
I’ll never understand why they allowed the DH in one league and not the other.
My preference in no DH – I don’t like it. It changes the whole strategy of the game. And I’m tire of hearing the AL is so much better than the NL. Of course it will be – they’ve got 9 hitters in the lineup. NL typically only has 8.