Baseball instant replay: Tech isn’t magic

Marie Wegman of the Fort Wayne Daisies "argues" with ump Norris Ward in 1948
Marie Wegman of the Fort Wayne Daisies "argues" with ump Norris Ward in 1948

For the third straight baseball postseason, umpires have been making critical, high-profile mistakes in game after game, and there’s a growing drumbeat among media and fans that Major League Baseball has to do something about it. And not just any something, but one specific something: instant replay.

The entire conversation about umpiring has been predicated on the assumption that the only solution to the problem is a technological one, which is fascinating — and maybe just a little troubling — because everyone in the conversation knows two things: There are acres of room for improvement that has nothing to do with technology, and the technology itself is far from perfect.

We know from other sports, especially NFL football, that video replay is hardly perfect. Putting aside the unnecessarily long delays that accompany video replay in the NFL, it’s a simple fact about video that it does not always provide conclusive evidence of what happened. Camera angles can be as deceptive as the naked eye.

And more important, the NFL’s replay system is a laboratory of unintended consequences. Introduced for the same reason many people want to introduce replay to baseball — to put an end to egregious officiating mistakes — it has become the lord of officials. It has changed the way officials call games. Refs now err on the side of the reviewable call, or make no call at all so replay can be possible. They have changed the way they call fumbles and completions. Watch an old NFL game from before replay and you’ll be struck at the difference in officiating and rules interpretation.

People will argue over the specifics of those last two paragraphs, but there’s no one familiar with replay who doesn’t know that replay is far from perfect, that despite — I would say because of — replay being entrenched in the NFL for years, officiating is still such a problem that a huge number of fans can convince themselves that a recent Super Bowl was fixed by the refs.

Yet the only anti-replay argument that ever sees the light of day is the Luddite one: Instant replay would rob baseball, that most human of games, of an essential human element.

That’s a valid argument, but it’s a religious one. No one is ever going to be argued off of it, and if you don’t buy it, you’re not going to be talked into it.

But it’s interesting that the argument against it goes like this: Instant replay might not be perfect, but it’s better than what we have now, so we should use it. That argument ignores a vital question. Is instant replay better than some other solution?

If you’ve been around as long as most of the people who are in the most public part of this argument — media figures and baseball officials — technology has been a series of miracles in your life. You can carry a supercomputer in your pocket that connects you to anywhere in the world all the time? Are you kidding? I’m not even 50 and I remember when it was a big deal that someone could leave you a taped message when they called your house — the only place you could have a phone — and you weren’t there.

Got a problem? Technology can probably fix it, and if not, just wait a little. It’s coming. Marvelous times.

But I think we sometimes forget that technology isn’t the only fix, and it isn’t always the best one, and not just for squishy reasons having to do with idealizing human error. Human error is a bad thing, and technology is often fantastic at doing away with it. But it can also do away with some good human things, like judgment and holistic problem solving.

Think about law enforcement for a moment — and sports officiating is essentially law enforcement. Which is more effective at fighting crime, an elaborate system of video surveillance or a program of job training, substance abuse education and treatment, community investment and so on? Or if that’s too liberal-sounding for you, focus in tighter. If you’re a parent, which is more effective at getting your kids to behave like solid citizens, spy cams around the house or engaged, loving parenting?

If you wanted to design a system that would result in poor umpiring, you would design Major League Baseball’s system. It’s positively medieval. Umpires essentially have lifetime tenure. They are sequestered from the media and answer only to a review system that is as secretive as it is pointless, since it hardly ever results in umpires losing their jobs. Instant replay won’t change that lack of accountability.

“We never know why or when they are fined, or reprimanded or held accountable,” Oakland A’s pitcher Brad Ziegler told ESPN’s Amy K. Nelson last week. “Any time a player is punished, suspended or sent down to the minors, the public knows about it. It would be a lot easier to communicate with umpires if everyone was held to similar standards. Our statistics as players are a lot more quantifiable than the umpires’.”

I am something of a Luddite when it comes to instant replay, not because I’m anti-technology — I have a long-distance line to New York in my pocket, and the call is free? Score! — but because I think baseball has been smart about being slow to change over the last century-plus. Replay would suddenly, irreversibly alter a game that has a pretty good history of solving its problems without radical, game-altering solutions.

I don’t believe baseball should absolutely avoid instant replay because instant replay is evil. I believe it should try to tackle the organizational problems that are leading to the poor umpiring rather than slap an electronic band-aid on them.

Nelson’s ESPN story is about a planned winter meeting between the grumbling players association, baseball officials and the umpires. Nelson describes such a meeting as “rare,” which is a problem right there. Shouldn’t the three parties involved in this major issue for Major League Baseball talk to each other more than rarely?

It’s a good step. I’m not too hopeful it’s going to lead to a new era of transparency and reform. No one from the umpires or Major League Baseball would comment for the story.

Photo: State Library and Archives of Florida

Super Bowl

Salon column from Monday about the game — the Steelers won, case you didn’t hear — and one from Wednesday arising from the debate about Kurt Warner and the Hall of Fame in the comments section of Monday’s piece.

Someone on Facebook pointed out that I never really came out for or against Warner as a Hall of Famer. That’s true. I’m kind of agnostic. I don’t really have a feel for what really constitutes a Hall of Famer in sports other than baseball. Coming at it like a baseball guy, Warner has a rockin’ peak but not enough good years for my taste.

But I don’t know. For all I know the Hall is filled with guys who only had three or four great years. Football careers are short and injury-filled.

I lean no on Warner, but am willing to be convinced. That’s why I said I’d love to see a comparison of Warner with other great quarterbacks, but adjusted for era. I already know that he threw for way more yards than Bob Griese. I want to know if he was really better.

Old habits

Bob Edwards asked me on the radio who I was picking in the Super Bowl. I told him the Arizona Cardinals. Noting that President Obama is taking the Pittsburgh Steelers — since he’s a lot more likely to get votes in Pennsylvania than in Arizona — Bob said, “You’re going against the leader of the free world.”

I said, “It’s a hard habit to break.”

How super are the Arizona Cardinals?

New Salon column.

A bit late in the game to post it, but I had a busy day. You? My new job is being the guy in charge of Salon’s cover, a responsibility so awesome I often wear pants when on the clock. Today was kind of a 10-hour sprint, with constant updates from our crack team of reporters and commentators.

And hang on, I’ve been joking around so that sounds like a joke about the crack team. Not a joke. Our writers are really good.

So it would have been enough a crazy day, but I had to do it with a very bored 5-year-old hanging around. Thank you, San Francisco Unified School District, for randomly abdicating your responsibility of educating my kid on one of my busiest work days of the decade. Thanks for that. I’m sure the staff is much more developed now than it was on Monday. Whatever that means. I don’t know what it means but I think beer is involved.

Buster was actually a champ, only demonstrating stir-crazy, cabin-fever like behavior on a couple of occasions. I did get a chance to take him out to lunch at Starvin Marvin’s on Geneva, where we had really good cheeseburgers — and watched the inauguration parade.

Every once in a while Buster would walk into the room, see Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer on the TV and say something like, “Man, why are those guys still talking?”

A nation was wondering about that right along with you, son.

NFL Conference Championship Games

New Salon column.

It’s the second time ever that two teams with single-digit wins have met to see who goes to the Super Bowl. The first was the Ice Bowl, the 1967 NFL Championship Game in Green Bay when the Packers beat the Cowboys on Bart Starr’s sneak. And those two nine-win teams only played a 14-game schedule.

I can’t figure out if the Cardinals and Eagles are historically mediocre for teams advancing so far or if they’ve advanced historically far for teams so mediocre.

0-for-lifetime

I have a few lifetime goals. I mean, I have some silly ones like raising my kids well and doing meaningful work, that sort of thing. But I have some really important ones.

I’d like to see a no-hitter in person.

I’d like to pick every baseball division winner some year (I once came close, in the three-division era, when I got three, and the fourth team, the Tigers, should have won but crapped out down the stretch).

I’d like to pick every NFL division winner some year (I’ve never been within two zip codes of this).

I’d like to go 11-0 picking NFL playoff games some year. This is the most realistic of my goals, including the silly ones above, but I don’t think I’ve ever done better than 8-3. I didn’t have a lot of confidence going in this year that I’d do it. I never do. But I thought I had a good chance to get through Saturday, because I didn’t think much of the Cardinals or the Chargers, and I thought the Colts were playing well.

My perfect record lasted three hours. Actually, less than that because it was pretty apparent well before the end that the Falcons weren’t going to come back. Where did that Cardinals performance come from? They played defense and everything. And the Falcons looked rattled and jittery.

Oh well, I’m going to regroup with some simpler, more attainable goals than the 11-0 playoff thing: Clear the clutter off my desk and make a million dollars.