This makes me assume that sooner rather than later baseball will finally give in to a program of video replay. A way to make sure that close plays that can decide games are not left cold to the whim of an umpire put on the spot.

There is still this reluctance within baseball to go forward and endorse a still limited but ever more expanded use of video review because it is the grand old game and as America’s favourite past time baseball is not supposed to change. Change like that according to some can only make the future lose connection with the much heralded baseball past.

Let me address that fallible thinking that baseball doesn’t change or hasn’t changed since 1890 because nothing could be further from the truth. If anything the change in baseball may be more pronounced than in some of those other sports because it has been played for so long.

BASEBALL DOES CHANGE

Baseball became grand as North America’s modified game of cricket and in the early days the pitching mound was not 60 feet from home plate as it is today. Heck home plate didn’t look like a five sided house until 1900. It became more important in 1900 to have the right shape because around then the strike zone started to mean something as they attempted to make agreeable rules for the integration of the leagues. In 1889 the game evolved and they started giving batters a free base when the pitcher missed the strike zone four times making it a base on balls.

When the Major Leagues were formed into the current two leagues in 1903 they agreed on new rules and things pretty much stayed the same ever since...um well, no, not exactly for a myriad of subtle and not so hidden reasons.

Like how every ballpark is different.

Is that a tradition thing or a way to make a competitive advantage?

Baseball is never about comparing era versus era really. Teams would move their field configuration slightly year to year based on what they needed. Be it a short porch in left for their sluggers or a way to keep balls in the field of play. In the 1970s and 1980 the Yankees were moving their home plate closer to the outfield to produce offense while creating more foul territory in play to help their pitchers which they could do after a few approved renovations.

Some teams added artificial turf which made the ball and players move quicker, and of late most teams have adopted field turf to have the benefit of softer grass but not have to grow it. So the field has changed and the season got longer. How can playing championship games in November in cold cities be the same as playing before Columbus Day?

Some teams play indoors, and others play indoors one day and then outdoors the next. There have been accusations that retractable stadiums favour the home pitcher in the parts of the season when weather is an excuse to keep the roof open or closed. And there were not teams on the west coast before the 1950s and I hear nobody lobbying for Major Leaguers to re-embrace train travel to live the Joe DiMaggio experience.

All outdoor stadiums have tarps so they can play games on rainy days between the showers. That was not attempted one hundred years ago. I guess somebody thought it was a good idea or better than trying to play more doubleheaders.

The bats have changed and the gloves have changed and players have cleats to help them in all field conditions and for running the bases.

We even have an All-Star Game that means something since now the winning league gets home field advantage for its World Series participant, and who could forget the Commissioner’s office and its sweeping power to make spur of the moment decisions that can affect games? Like when Bud Selig suspended the deciding game of the World Series in Philadelphia because he thought it was too cold by the seventh inning to determine a champion that night.

Oh and I almost forgot about the designated hitter which is used in one league by all its teams, and the other teams get to sample it during interleague play. Of course interleague play created a very unbalanced schedule so I am not sure what MLB actually considers consistency.

We can call these things all change or we can call them adjustments appropriate with the times. They were all necessary for the better marketing of the game. Some of these changes met opposition, but it is hard to argue baseball never changes, so in light of the need for instant replay in the sport today the current needs of the game should outweigh the need to preserve some sort of tradition.

EASIEST SPORT FOR VIDEO

Maybe in 1970 or 1980 it was a bad time to think about instant replay with the primitive television technology and every game not necessarily equipped to be any clearer than an umpire’s first instinct. However if that is so, then 2011 certainly is the time to consider it because the tech end is now able to address the sports needs for timeliness and clarity like never before.

Baseball should be the easiest of the big pro sports in which to actually implement broader video review.

Really in baseball the scoring plays are the least complex of any sport and it is rather cut and dry.

There is one ball and we always know where it is going. The play to score or to get an out is always happening in the same predictable places. It is not like football where several factors can all negate a scoring play like ball control, a knee down, touched by contact, forward progress, out of bounds, and the whistle to stop play all converging on one incident making it tedious to sort out.

Video replay only need be in its simplest of forms to improve baseball and unlike some of the other sports does not have to be expensive and time consuming.

Usually money and the expectation that any form of video replay will make games longer and less television friendly are the real crutch arguments for baseball brass to avoid the issue altogether.

These are two issues where in baseball they have it backwards.

Well they are wrong about the cost and time because they are looking at it through an already broken system. They already have games longer than they need to be and those games are already on enough HD television sets that people see game changing mistakes all the time.

Who benefits from watching a really long sometimes boring baseball game only to see it end in a result of question?

Isn’t it most important for the public relations aspect to get it right?

Football thinks so. That is why they improved the flow of their game and connected replay with a coach’s challenge so it would not be used on every play. The NFL wants analysts talking about the game and not the referees mistakes.

Hockey thinks so. They have instant replay for determining whether a goal is legal. It was important to make sure the five or six moments of drama in the NHL are clean for the integrity of the game and its officials. Things happen very fast and everyone wants to make sure the team and players involved in scoring goals are not penalized by human mistake.

Why even baseball brought in limited replay to review if a home run actually is a home run. So they already use the advantage of the many angles of cameras in use at every game.

ALEX RODRIGUEZ RULE

In 2008 baseball started experimenting with replay, but the tipping point was an Alex Rodriguez home run in Yankee Stadium that was not ruled a home run which set the rules committee into speedy action.

In a game against Baltimore, Rodriguez hit the ball to straight away centerfield in old Yankee Stadium. There was a white railing sort of above the wall that the ball ever so grazed bounding back on to the field. The umpire ruled that the ball landed in play a fair ball.

On television they could even see the mud from the ball made a mark on the railing and it should have been a homerun.

The next night the railing was painted black because the Yankees fixed it so that it would be unlikely to ever happen again. Not long after that Major League Baseball allowed instant replay to review homerun calls (or non-calls) at every park.

We still think if that had happened in Houston, Oakland or Atlanta to some other team where the media may not have played the mistake up as much that there still would not be any replay in baseball.

It’s much simpler to make change when baseball combines the Yankees with the public relations disaster of a star player chasing homerun records’ denied because of an errant call, and only then baseball will listen to remedy.