Baseball

Two nights, two blown calls: Time for replay?

Deep in tradition, baseball remains only pro sport not to use video review

Pat Sullivan / AP

Chicago's Aramis Ramirez (16), Geovany Soto (18) and Kosuke Fukudome head to the dugout after scoring on Soto's three-run homer in the fourth inning against the Houston Astros on Monday.

Yet on Tuesday, Watson was on hand as workers removed a piece of wood in center field that was painted yellow.

“There’s no need for that type of confusion at a big league ballpark,” he said.

Doesn’t have to be so tough, said Paul Hawkins. He lives in England and hasn’t watched a lot of baseball, but does have a very good view on this subject.

He developed the Hawk-Eye technology that brought replay to Grand Slam tennis. Accurate to within 3 millimeters — an error margin equal to the width of a ball’s fuzz — his systems are used in international cricket and have been tested in British soccer.

“It is frustrating when I watch an official’s call that is wrong that could be corrected,” he said from his office. “I mean, the goal is to get it right.”

“Baseball has shied away from technology since their horrendous trial with using Questec to call strikes-balls. The problem there was not so much that the idea was bad, but the specific technology/company were not up to the job. But once bitten, twice shy,” he said.

Hawkins said it would be easy to adapt his computers to track fair-foul calls. That is, if baseball asked. No offers, so far.

“It would be as if the Metropolitan police or the New York City police decided that they didn’t want to use forensic methods that are available, that they wanted to only rely on the old ways of doing police work,” he said. “If the police said that, it would be like, ’You what?”’

Makes sense to Derek Jeter.

“I think fair or foul maybe would be good,” the Yankees shortstop said. “It depends on what you’re replaying, how much you would replay. Are you doing do it once an inning? Do you throw the red flag like in football?”

With six decades in broadcasting, Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully remembers the days before television replays illuminated every umpire’s call. He could see using it on a limited basis.

“Where it involves the physical layout of the ballpark — the foul poles, the foul lines, a fan possibly interfering, I don’t see what would be wrong with that at all. But I wouldn’t like it on balls and strikes — I wouldn’t even want it on close plays,” he said.

Reds star Ken Griffey Jr. had mixed feelings.

“That’s up to the owners and everybody else to vote on,” he said. “I mean, how many times has it happened over the last five years — a handful of times?”

Then again, the slugger with nearly 600 career home runs said he couldn’t ever remember a bad call costing him.

“Hopefully when I hit them, there’s no doubts,” he said.

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