We already have instant replay in every aspect of baseball and it works well. It works in every other sport, from tennis to football, and none of those sports are worse for embracing the technology. Yet even in the face of the most recent rash of highly publicized mistakes by its umpires that could have been immediately corrected by TV replays, baseball still has some reluctance.

Selig and the other replay obstructionists seem to fear what will happen to their game with more input from TV replay. They act like more replay will make their bodies combustible. Instant replay is not going to be that painful. It’s intended to help, not hurt the game. We already know that instant replay can fix the mistakes that imperfect men make every night and day.

We see it on ESPN on those endless highlight loops that run all day. Instant replay works. We know it works because we watch replay in action during every single major-league baseball game when in press boxes all over America, almost by instinct, baseball writers reflexively turn their heads towards TV screens to refer to televised replays. In bars and family homes everywhere in the baseball-viewing world, the average viewer does the same thing.

They do it in the ballpark, where the replay is shown to anyone with eyes and the ability to check out the replays, and we don’t just take a peek on disputed home run calls, either.

The idea in every game we play is fairness. The idea in every game we play is to get it right. So why are replay obstructionists so reluctant to use the technology to its fullest extent? The romantics respond with the cloying and cockeyed logic that believes that part of the pure perfection of baseball is its glorified imperfection. It’s “the human element,” they say.

Every time I hear that I just want to scream.

And I want to scream about this too: The biggest drawback they say to using replay beyond the home-run calls is that instant replay will slow the game down. News flash. Baseball’s already slow. It’s not a video game. It’s baseball, and it was intended to have a more unhurried pace.

Seriously, how much slower would baseball be with additional use of instant replay?

Without replay on a play at the plate or a wrong call on a player trapping the ball, one bad call can create a dispute that turns a game into The Neverending Story.

You know the drill: Controversial call provokes angry snit by player who throws his cap, stomps the ground, cusses up a storm (elapsed time: 45 seconds).

The player is then joined by the first-base coach, who steps in between the player and ump, huffs and puffs, cusses and fusses, kicks up dirt, shoves the player away again (elapsed time: 1 minute 45 seconds) …

The umpire returns fire, cussing and pointing, waving his hands hysterically while ducking the spittle and insults coming from the manager, who has now joined the little dust up (elapsed time: 2:10) …

And boy is the manager putting on a show.

In a fit of irrational showmanship, our feisty field general is building a dirt castle over home plate. He follows that with a tantrum as he flings the base toward the outfield while vulgarly spewing all sorts of questions about the umpire’s vision, birthplace and family lineage (elapsed time: 2:30).

And now both the player and manager have been tossed out of the game, and the manager returns to the dugout where he starts lobbing batting helmets, gloves, bats and water buckets onto the field …

In a fraction of the three-plus minutes that traditional little circus would take, the umps could have reviewed the play 15 times on a replay screen and been done with it.

If you ask me, I’d rather have the technological element than the human one if the machine can see it better than the man.

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