by Josh Komon

Created on: July 29, 2009   Last Updated: July 30, 2009

The NFL is the leader in organized professional team sports. They set the bar, and all the other sports follow. The issue at large today, is the use of replay. The NFL has a pretty decent system for ensuring that the officials call the game correctly. Major League Baseball, as of August 2008, is starting to follow suit.

MLB first (and to the date of the writing of this article, only) used replay at the umpires discretion to determine whether or not a home run ball was fair or foul. So far, it works great. The use of replay doesn't happen very often, when it does, people generally agree that the umpires got the call right, and most importantly, the use of replay in this regard does not add much time to an already long game. So far, so good.

Now, there is talk about expanding the use of instant replay in major league baseball. No one has come up with a comprehensive plan for its implementation, but there are certainly many players, managers, owners, reporters, etc. who want to see replay used for plays at home, and even tag plays at third, and second base. These would be especially useful on close calls for stolen bases. There are certainly some close plays at first base, and it is not unthinkable that it might not be used there as well.

The best ideas are stolen from other sources. If the red-flag method works so well in the NFL, (A coach gets two challenges on a call per game. If both calls are overturned, that coach is rewarded with a third challenge.) why can't a similar program be used in the Major Leagues. Two challenges per nine innings should be more than enough. To copy exactly, might just work fine. My belief is that managers should only allowed one challenge per game, as there usually aren't more controversial calls than that in any single game. Other ideas would be to have a certain number of challenges per series. Managers get one per game, but could conceivably use two challenges in one game, and none in another.

Baseball is great as it is, but if replay could be used to improve it, why not try it. Baseball has a very long spring training, which could provide a sizable sample to test these methods to see if they work. If they don't, baseball can always go back to playing the way they have for over a hundred years.

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