Twelve Steps to Improve Baseball

[EasyAce]

By Yours Truly
http://www.sports-central.org/sports/2018/02/23/mt-preview-d9390b55db6983215ace14f458751230ddde26bb.php

Swing a cat by the tail and you won't miss hitting a baseball fan who has dozens of theories about how to improve baseball. You have even less
chance of missing a writer who has a few. So would you like to improve baseball for the better? Here's a rough outline for you from one writer:

1) Get rid of the television and radio commercial breaks for pitching changes. A relief pitcher can get in from the bullpen to the game mound a
lot quicker than it takes the commercials for "this call to the bullpen" to play. And while we're on the subject of relief pitching . . .

2) Get rid of the eight warmups on the game mound. This is still a challenge for Joe and Jane Fan, but relief pitchers ought to be plenty warmed
up by the time they get in a game. Depending on their managers' prudence and brains, and not necessarily in that order, a reliever has probably
thrown the equivalent of three good innings' worth of pitches before he was brought in. He needs eight more warmups about as much as our
weekends need Donald Trump's tweetstorms. The sole exception to the rule should remain the reliever brought in because the incumbent was
injured and forced to leave the game---let him continue to take all the time he needs to heat up.

3) Use a pitch clock---but make it thirty seconds. Twenty seconds, the former recommendation (I think), is a little too quick. Thirty should be just
about right. Pedro Baez should be made to wear a belt that delivers a full-body electric shock if he doesn't throw within thirty seconds of getting
the ball back from the catcher.

4) Once and for all, get rid of the goddam wild cards. There's just too much laughable about the thrills and chills of watching exciting stretch drives
to determine who gets to finish . . . in second place. This means, too, that we're going to have to . . .

5) Rewire the postseason tiers. Hah! You thought you'd escape me making the argument again? Well, I won't shaddap about it until it happens or I
go to the Elysian Fields, whichever comes first: a) The league division winners with the best regular-season record get a round-one bye. b) The remaining
two division winners play a best-of-three, and the winner meets the bye team. c) The League Championship Series is returned to a best-of-five. d) The
World Series's primacy as a best-of-seven is restored. Wouldn't it be great not to be oversaturated by postseason play by the time the World Series
comes around?

6) Be done with regular-season interleague play. We've tried it for two decades. It isn't as much fun as the geniuses who came up with it thought. Not
even Yankees versus Mets, not even Cubs versus White Sox, not even Dodgers versus Angels, and surely not Giants versus Athletics even if the A's
suddenly become a dangerous team again. But if you absolutely must keep it, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated has a great idea: flip the league rules.
Use the DH in the National League park and play under National League rules in the American League park.

7) Make the umpires accountable. There are still too many arbiters who think they're laws unto themselves. Reality check: No fan has ever paid money
to attend a baseball game in order to see an umpire. (With the possible exception, God rest his soul, of Ron Luciano.) The commissioner's office needs
to secure umpire oversight and enforce it.

Yes, a similar idea led to the implosion of the former umpires' union and the creation of the current one. But when we can still talk about umpires'
"individual" strike zones, there's still something amiss. What Sandy Alderson (then working baseball government) once feared before the old union
destroyed itself over the accountability issue---"I got worried when I found out that players were more concerned with who was umpiring the next day
than they were about who was pitching"---is probably still true for too many. Teams should not be more concerned about whether Joe West or Angel
Hernandez or C.J. Bucknor are behind the plate than whether Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, or Justin Verlander are on the mound.

While we're at it, how about public accountability? When a player misbehaves on the field we learn of his punishment almost quicker than it's handed
down. But when an umpire is caught being naughty, we never know just how he was held to account. Who does baseball think the umpires are, the
Supreme Court?

And who cares if a player is outraged enough about a blown call or an ump's misbehaviour to criticise the ump in subsequent interviews? The lowest
citizen of the United States can rip the president of the United States a new one if he or she thinks the president does or says wrong, and the president
can't do a damn thing legally. Where did baseball government get off fining someone like Ian Kinsler last year for telling Hernandez to his face and then
to the press he thought Hernandez did a horrible job? Ray of hope: When the umps wore white wristbands protesting Kinsler's remarks, baseball government
told them try it again and see how much lighter you are in the bank accounts. Maybe there's hope. However small.

8) Reaching base isn't supposed to hurt. But it did cost Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, to name two, a third of a season last year. (In Trout's case, the
absence from that thumb injury might have cost him an MVP; in Harper's, it might have taken a little off his swing when the Nationals needed him most.)
The bases now are about as soft as a bag of marble and slicker than an oily driveway. You'd think that after enough on-the-bases injuries to a group of
players who could win you a pennant if they played together that either the commissioner or the players' association would raise hackles about it.

9) So what was the replay result? If you're watching on television or listening on the radio, you know the why as well as the what in a replay ruling. If
you're in the ballpark, you haven't got a clue unless you have a radio in your ear. Let the umps announce the why of a replay call. It's been working on
penalty flag calls in the NFL for decades. That may be the only thing baseball should think about borrowing from football.

10) The All-Star Game doesn't count for a damn thing---so stop changing pitchers during innings. Verducci is right about this one, too: "You're an All-
Star and you can't get through an inning? Or the manager wants to play 'match-up' in a game that doesn't count? Really?"

11) Change the All-Star Game voting, once and for all. When they're not trying to stuff ballot boxes for the home team, fans have a funny habit of voting
for All-Stars a) as lifetime achievement awards, or b) whether or not they can actually play in the game. (Trout last year was the latest example: he was
on the disabled list with that thumb injury, and he got voted to the starting lineup anyway.) The All-Star Game is supposed to show the best in the game,
not the most popular or the future Hall of Famers regardless of whether they can play like Hall of Famers anymore.

(As FiveThirtyEight's Neil Paine noted last year, Cal Ripken, Jr. made too many All-Star teams and Keith Hernandez made not as many as he deserved to
make---one when he deserved to make seven more, in fact. And Derek Jeter was once voted to a starting lineup when he was both on the disabled list and
not playing anywhere close to All-Star performance.)

Let the fans vote for the full rosters, but then let the Game's two managers and their coaches pick the starting lineups. While we're at it, let the fans vote
only once. Even on the Internet. Unless you really want to take a chance that the guy who isn't even the best player on his own team might become an All-
Star starter, for whatever nebulous reason. (Which almost happened in 2015, when Kansas City fans tried to stuff the ballot boxes despite the real chance
of Omar Infante---who was on record believing that Houston's Jose Altuve deserved the honour---making the starting lineup.)

12) Lose the scoreboard video arcades!! The last time I sat in a major league ballpark I couldn't help noticing as many fans paying equal attention to the
videos on the scoreboards as they paid to the field. Ballparks aren't supposed to be video games. You want to watch video, stay home and watch the game
on television. You want to watch a baseball game, start agitating for the removal of everything on the scoreboard that doesn't have anything to do with the
score, or the play scoring, or the pitches and pitch counts. You should be in Angel Stadium, or Dodger Stadium, or Yankee Stadium, or Fenway Park, or
Petco Park, or Wrigley Field, or Camden Yards---not in GameWorks.

That's a twelve-step program with which baseball could get on board to everybody's benefit. And I'm not even running for commissioner.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Polly Ticks
@Machiavelli
@Cyber Liberty
@Slip18
@Bigun
@Right_in_Virginia
@truth_seeker
@DCPatriot
@Mom MD
@musiclady
@TomSea
@catfish1957
@GrouchoTex
@Freya
@flowers
@WarmPotato

[WingNot]

Did not read.   Was there a step that lowered admission prices?

[EasyAce]

Did not read.   Was there a step that lowered admission prices?

@Wingnut
I'd suspect that those would start coming down when losing the commercial breaks for pitching changes and reducing the scoreboards
to the bare essentials (less cost to maintain, you know) came into being. At least until the owners figure out new and more imaginative
ways to siphon dollars from fan and broadcast pockets. (I long for the day when baseball has a commissioner who understands the
common good of the game isn't the same thing as making money for the owners.)

[WingNot]

@Wingnut
I'd suspect that those would start coming down when losing the commercial breaks for pitching changes and reducing the scoreboards
to the bare essentials (less cost to maintain, you know) came into being. At least until the owners figure out new and more imaginative
ways to siphon dollars from fan and broadcast pockets. (I long for the day when baseball has a commissioner who understands the
common good of the game isn't the same thing as making money for the owners.)

So....I guess the answer to my question was, no.

[EasyAce]

So....I guess the answer to my question was, no.

I was more concerned with game and play quality in my essay. Those would actually be steps in urging down
prices.

[WingNot]

I was more concerned with game and play quality in my essay. Those would actually be steps in urging down
prices.

Well.  Chicken and the Egg then  I see it more as a "fan in low places" who feels that No one really gives a shit about a dying sport that shuts out their fan base.   

[truth_seeker]

Revert to rules of 1960. Uniform styles, too.

[EasyAce]

Revert to rules of 1960. Uniform styles, too.

@truth_seeker
I'd sooner see the 1960s uniform styles come back. Well, maybe not all of them. (Though the worst of those was still better than the unis of the 1970s/80s that looked more like slo-pitch beer league softball uniforms---I'm talking about you, late 70s Pittsburgh Pirates, in particular . . . )

I would not want to revert otherwise to the era in which players were still, essentially, chattel, and in which "competitive balance" was still something of a joke. (For those who still don't know, there have been more different World Series winners since the end of the reserve clause era than there were during the reserve era.)

[andy58-in-nh]

1) Get rid of the television and radio commercial breaks for pitching changes.  Amen. But these wouldn't be possible if MLB decided to...
2) Get rid of the eight warmups on the game mound. Agreed. Totally unnecessary except where the previous pitcher is injured.
3) Use a pitch clock---but make it thirty seconds. I like the idea, as it would nullify the effect of Human Rain Delays on the mound. But it is rather important to consider what the penalty or penalties ought to be, and under what circumstances. A called Ball? Okay, I guess. What if a runner on first tries to steal and is thrown out, but the pitcher exceeded the allotted time to pitch to Home? Is the runner then safe? Or is a ball (other than Ball Four) called and the runner out?   
4) Once and for all, get rid of the goddam wild cards. Two words: Hell. Yes. After 162 friggin' games, the regular season has to mean something.
5) Rewire the postseason tiers. Yes, again. The division championships should mean something, and in the postseason, when Nice Baseball Weather is rapidly diminishing in its availability, less would be more.
6) Be done with regular-season interleague play. Ditto. I hated this idea 20 years ago, and I hate it now. It works in the NFL because they only play 16 regular season games and the rules are identical in both the NFC and AFC. There is a less compelling story when an AL team plays an NL team in the World Series that they have already played multiple times in the regular season.
7) Make the umpires accountable. That's okay. God will judge them.
8) Reaching base isn't supposed to hurt. Meh. Stop sliding face first into first base, you showboats. And if you're stealing second, keeps your cleats up, or else use tougher gloves.
9) So what was the replay result? Mike the umps? Yeah, it would be nice to hear their rationale, or at least that of the replay guys back in Manhattan.
10) The All-Star Game doesn't count for a damn thing---so stop changing pitchers during innings. You still watch the All-Star Game?
11) Change the All-Star Game voting, once and for all. Maybe then, more of us would watch the All-Star Game...
12) Lose the scoreboard video arcades!! Yes, it is distracting for us older fans, but the kids like it because it reduces their separation anxiety from their iPads and cell phones, which they still have turned on, anyway.

[andy58-in-nh]

@truth_seeker
I'd sooner see the 1960s uniform styles come back. Well, maybe not all of them. (Though the worst of those was still better than the unis of the 1970s/80s that looked more like slo-pitch beer league softball uniforms---I'm talking about you, late 70s Pittsburgh Pirates, in particular . . . )

I would not want to revert otherwise to the era in which players were still, essentially, chattel, and in which "competitive balance" was still something of a joke. (For those who still don't know, there have been more different World Series winners since the end of the reserve clause era than there were during the reserve era.)

Dock Ellis, looking like he's catching a break on a prison work farm pickup squad.

[Bigun]

I would go back letting the players pick the all star teams.  Otherwise no disagreement.

[EasyAce]

7) Make the umpires accountable. That's okay. God will judge them.

You think God wants to deal with Joe West? Please, even God has rights under the Eighth Amendment! ;)

8) Reaching base isn't supposed to hurt. Meh. Stop sliding face first into first base, you showboats.

Neither Trout nor Harper, the two examples I noted, got hurt sliding into first, headfirst or otherwise. These days, the only time you might see a hitter trying head first for first base, normally, unless he's diving back on a pickoff attempt, is if he has any idea the play at the pad might be close enough that diving in might mean the difference between safe and out/side retired.

And if you're stealing second, keeps your cleats up, or else use tougher gloves.

How about going back to the old canvas bag bases? Nobody got hurt so frequently sliding into those. (Well, maybe a canvas burn now and then. That's a joke, son.) And that's when baseball shoes had spikes, not cleats, and a runner was more likely to go down if he tried to stop himself short on a close play before reaching the base than by sliding into it. You're supposed to be trying to reach base, not stone. ;)

[EasyAce]

I would go back letting the players pick the all star teams.  Otherwise no disagreement.

@Bigun
After the Cincinnati ballot box stuffing scandal of the 1957 All-Star Game (seven of the Reds' eight starting-lineup position players were voted to the All-Star Game as starters; even the Cincinnati stuffers couldn't hustle first baseman George Crowe past Stan Musial, though Crowe was actually having more of an All-Star season than most of the other seven), the All-Star vote was given to players, managers, and coaches alike. It stayed that way until 1970.

[goatprairie]

This might sound a bit silly, but put a camera on top of the umpires face mask. Or even more pitches from the camera behind the backstop with just more close-ups. It would be very interesting to see batters swing at pitches from the umpire's view. I know the people who televise games like the view from centerfield a lot more, because that's where you see 99% of the pitches during a tv game.
I remember going to a BlueJays game in their old Exhibition Stadium back in the eighties. I had a seat that was almost directly behind the batter.  It was a great view seeing the balls and strikes from behind home plate and the view of the ball going out to the fielders after being hit.

[DCPatriot]

This might sound a bit silly, but put a camera on top of the umpires face mask. Or even more pitches from the camera behind the backstop with just more close-ups. It would be very interesting to see batters swing at pitches from the umpire's view. I know the people who televise games like the view from centerfield a lot more, because that's where you see 99% of the pitches during a tv game.
I remember going to a BlueJays game in their old Exhibition Stadium back in the eighties. I had a seat that was almost directly behind the batter.  It was a great view seeing the balls and strikes from behind home plate and the view of the ball going out to the fielders after being hit.

LOL!

When I was a boy, I watched baseball on TV.   ONE camera, a bird's eye view BEHIND home plate.  In Black & White.

Today, there's no excuse for The Game not catching up with technology.

[Polly Ticks]

12) Lose the scoreboard video arcades!! The last time I sat in a major league ballpark I couldn't help noticing as many fans paying equal attention to the videos on the scoreboards as they paid to the field.

This might help reduce the number of people injured by foul balls into the stands, too. 

[EasyAce]

Today, there's no excuse for The Game not catching up with technology.

@DCPatriot
I can tell you how the practise of shooting from behind the pitcher via outfield camera began---with Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy,
and Ralph Kiner when they were the Mets' broadcast team. It was a godsend to be able to see how the pitches actually crossed
the plate . . . and how willful even then some umpires were about "individual" strike zones rather than the rulebook strike zones.
If I'm not mistaken, Nelson, Murphy, and Kiner began ordering a center field-mounted camera circa 1970. Far as I know, they
were the first to try it, though it might have been tried elsewhere in the same period.

A few years ago, I was watching the Dodgers play the Rockies on television, when ex-Dodger manager Jim Tracy was managing
the Rockies. There was an argument over an outfield play, whether the Rockies outfielder trapped or caught the ball. This was
before replay finally came in. Tracy argued the play and got himself tossed out of the game and he stayed out there to let the
umps have it for all he was worth (He's out, so he's playing with house money now, said Vin Scully about the protracted
argument) and the whole megillah took about ten minutes. After it finally ended, Scully purred, We have all this tech-
nology that we never use because they say it'll delay the game---well, what was that we just saw? (It takes way less
time to call for a replay review of a play---even with the relay to New York---than it takes most managers or players to argue
bad calls.)

[EasyAce]

This might help reduce the number of people injured by foul balls into the stands, too.

@Polly Ticks
That's a great point. Less distractions from around the ballpark, more attentiveness to the actual game, better chance of seeing what's
coming at you and catching it!

[jpsb]

Too many games, lose the DH in the AL, random drug testing to catch cheaters, speed up the
game with batter to first (or automatic ball) if the pitcher takes to long.

[EasyAce]

Too many games . . .

@jpsb
I addressed that regarding the postseason. Where there really are too many games.

. . . lose the DH in the AL . . .

A consummation devoutly to be wished, but it isn't going to happen, unfortunately.

. . . random drug testing to catch cheaters . . .

They already have it. Unfortunately, it's also catching players who aren't trying to "cheat." (Reality check: even in the so-called Wild West
era of actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances, there were players using them not for an edge on the field but just to try to
get back onto the field quicker in the first place following injuries. A parallel move should be to overhaul baseball's health care systems
and staffings; what happened to, among other things, last year's Mets was abominable, with all the injuries, and the Mets practically
yanked their medical staff inside out as a result. Other teams ought to think about doing likewise.)

. . . speed up the game with batter to first (or automatic ball) if the pitcher takes to long.

That's almost as foolish an idea as the proposal to allow managers to send whomever they damn well please up to hit in the ninth inning
instead of staying with the batting order. Better idea: if the pitcher takes too long, charge him with a ball. Or, impose my suggested Pedro
Baez rule. ;)

[dfwgator]

No more DH

No more interleague play

No more games in indoor stadiums and on artificial turf.

Get rid of instant replay, it's an abomination.

[EasyAce]

No more games in indoor stadiums and on artificial turf.

I think that, except for Tampa Bay and Toronto, nobody's playing on artificial turf anymore, even in the ballparks that have
retractable roofing.

Get rid of instant replay, it's an abomination.

There's no abomination when the idea is to get it right---especially when you're playing for a championship. There
are reasonable limits to how many challenges a manager can call for in a game. (And, by the way, one of the strongest advocates
on behalf of replay turned out to be an umpire whose blown call helped turn a World Series around---Don Denkinger.) I haven't
noticed the human element dissipating from the game because of technology that actually helps get the tight or debatable calls
right. And human element be damned, I got sick a long time ago of seeing teams lose critical games---or, in the case of
hapless Armando Gallaraga---pitchers losing no-hitters or perfect games on bad calls that could and should have been reversed.
And as much as I love a good historical baseball debate, it gets a little tiresome debating blown calls three or four decades
after the fact. Sometimes even fans in Kansas City and St. Louis get tired of debating the bottom of the ninth in Game Six,
1985 World Series, even if both cities can pretty much agree the Cardinals were foolish to see Denkinger rotated to calling balls
and strikes for Game Seven and to lose it as promptly as possible at the sight.

I can remember a classic such instance that didn't involve losing a perfect game or a no-hitter:

The Human Factor Be Damned
by Yours Truly, 27 July 2011.
http://throneberryfields.com/2011/07/27/the-human-factor-be-damned/

This is exactly what the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose surprising graduation from the National League’s near-two-decade doormats to legitimate
National League Central contenders has been one of the season’s sweet surprises, don’t need.

Never mind pitching coach Ray Searage tweeting an outraged Tweeter, “Deal with it.” If the Pirates hold to that attitude and push it to one side,
it will say plenty about the makeup of this year’s edition. But first the Pirates are going to let their feelings be known about home plate umpire
Jerry Meals absolutely blowing the call on the run that won a game for the Atlanta Braves in the bottom of the nineteenth. And enough of everyone
else are asking when baseball government is going to wise up and sanction instant replay.

It started when Atlanta reliever Scott Proctor—forced to bat because both sides had emptied their bullpens—batted one up the left side that was
picked off cleanly by Pittsburgh third baseman Pedro Alvarez on the run over the infield grass. Alvarez threw home on a perfect line to rookie catcher
Michael McKenry and Julio Lugo, the Braves’ baserunner coming down from third, looked like a dead duck.

McKenry was at least two feet up from the plate when he landed a ball-in-glove tag on Lugo sliding toward the plate. Any replay you care to review
will show you McKenry got the glove on Lugo’s forward leg, well before Lugo could have crossed the plate. As a matter of fact, Lugo bounded up out
of his slide at about the moment McKenry got the tag on him, and half-pirouetted around before he got half a foot on the plate standing up.

Meals winged his arms up in the safe call as Lugo stepped on the plate after the tag. It looked as though McKenry was replying to a Meals comment
and saying he’d gotten the tag down. ““I saw the tag, but he looked like he oléd him and I called him safe for that,” Meals said after the game. “I
looked at the replays and it appeared he might have got him on the shin area. I’m guessing he might have got him, but when I was out there when
it happened I didn’t see a tag. I just saw the glove sweep up. I didn’t see the glove hit his leg.”

The Pirates may have been trying to be gracious in defeat, but it didn’t stop the organisation from filing a formal protest. “[We] are extremely
disappointed by the way [our] 19-inning game against the Atlanta Braves ended earlier this morning. The game of baseball, and this game in particular,
filled with superlative performances by players on both clubs, deserved much better,” said general manager Frank Coonelly in a formal statement. ” . . .
While we cannot begin to understand how umpire Jerry meals did not see the tag . . . three feet in front of home plate, we do not question the integrity
of Mr. Meals. Instead, we know that Mr. Meals’ intention was to get the call right. Jerry Meals has been umpiring major league games for 14 years and
has always done so with integrity and professionalism. He got this one wrong.”

Indeed. And while it’s going to prove the launching pad for a showing of just what kind of mettle these plucky Pirates actually have going forward—they
were leading the NL Central and playing a nail-driver against the NL East-contending Braves, against whom they have a history of heartbreak enough
(the Sid Bream game in the 1992 National League Championship Series, anyone?)—it’s also proving evidence to spare on behalf of expanding replay’s
use beyond mere home run calls.

Let’s get one thing straight right off. There appeared no malice in Meals’s miscall. This wasn’t a case of several National League umpires so fed up with
Leo Durocher’s season-long baiting that any close call was going to go against the 1969 Chicago Cubs. This wasn’t an ump making a grudge call because
a player had gotten in his grille once too often. Meals may have had a questionable strike zone much of the night—both sides but the Braves in particular
fumed over it earlier in the game (especially when Nate McLouth got ejected fuming over a dubious strike-two call in the bottom of the ninth)—but in no
way, shape, or form did it appear he was performing under less than professional mandate. He didn’t come out and apologise, a la Jim Joyce viz Armando
Gallaraga’s should-have-been perfect game last year, but neither did he deny that he just might have been wrong.

Was the game perfect otherwise? Not exactly. Pirates manager Clint Hurdle, who’s making a solid case for Manager of the Year for getting this squad into
the thick of the race after eighteen losing seasons, made a few mistakes well before Meals’ biggie. He let Daniel McCutchen throw 92 pitches compared to
his previous season high of 52, and McCutchen was exhausted to every naked eye that could see after having pitched two straight days with 25 pitches
total following a five-day layoff. And it’s going to be forgotten somehow that, even had Lugo been called out at the plate, the Braves would still have had
one out yet to go.

Both teams left a small truckload of men on base. The Pirates actually had a shot at winning the game in the ninth, when McKenry managed an infield
single off Craig Kimbrel and took third on pinch hitter Brandon Wood’s followup single, but McKenry stopped too late breaking from third as the Braves
called a pitchout on an apparent suicide squeeze attempt. McCann fired a perfect strike up the line and McKenry was dead, before Kimbrel dispatched
batter Xavier Paul to end the frame.

The bullpens had already been the heroes of the evening as it was. Both teams’ bulls had combined to throw 26 scoreless innings on the night, with
Braves bull Cristhian Martinez throwing six scoreless just by himself. It may or may not have taken a little of the sting out of Atlanta losing Brian McCann
to an oblique strain incurred when he threw high and into center field trying to bag Neil Walker stealing second.

What should get bagged, once and for all, are the arguments in favour of the, ahem, “human factor” and against “prolonging the games even more” that
get deployed by the stubborn against deploying instant replay. Commissioner Bud Selig, who thinks himself a moderate willing to be persuaded either way
on the matter, is already responsible for elongated games as it is. Or haven’t you noticed all the commercials squeezed in between innings all game long
 with or without extra innings? That’s been expanded under Selig’s watch.

Human factor, my spike. The umpire’s job is to get it right, case closed. Anyone arguing otherwise should be dismissed as a terminal philistine. And if the
umpire needs a little technological help to get it right, get that help to him (them) post haste. “This isn’t about protecting baseball’s human element,” writes
Yahoo! Sports’s Jeff Passan. “The idea that a person’s capability to miss a call supersedes the ability to use technology and ensure accuracy is so insulting,
so wildly backward that it could come only from the offices of Major League Baseball.”

Actually, that argument also comes from people outside of baseball government who profess to stand on behalf protecting the game’s integrity. People who
tend to refuse offering reasons why a near-flagrantly blown call doesn’t compromise the game’s integrity. People who have no idea about McKenry’s night’s
work, catching every last one of Tuesday/Wednesday’s eighteen and two thirds innings, 303 pitches worth of catching, only to see it end with Meals telling
him he hadn’t done what he and everyone watching the live play and about two dozen television replays knew he had done.

Reality check: There’s still a lot of baseball for the Pirates and the Braves to play yet. This call probably isn’t going to make the difference between the Pirates
pulling off a miracle finish and going home empty, never mind that they’re having their best season since 1992. When an erstwhile Pirate on battered legs
managed to score from second, sliding home with the Braves’ pennant-winning run ahead of a throw in from left, and everyone in Pittsburgh and beyond
knew the club’s management wasn’t going to be able to keep the solid and National League East-owning team together.

Eighteen years, one division shift, and seven dead-last finishes worth of losing baseball later, the Pirates are America’s baseball feelgoods. They deserve to
be. Watching winning baseball in and from Pittsburgh once again is an absolute treat. The Pirates can keep it that way indeed by shaking off Tuesday/
Wednesday.

But they’re a lot more human than the fools perpetuating discredited arguments for the “human factor,” when even they admit that this one hurt like hell
when it absolutely didn’t have to hurt.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following day came Jerry Meals issuing a strong enough mea culpa:

"That's telling me I was incorrect in my position . . .": Jerry Meals
by Yours Truly, 28 July 2011
http://throneberryfields.com/2011/07/28/thats-telling-me-i-was-incorrect-in-my-position-jerry-meals/

“It’s a shame,” Atlanta Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said Wednesday, “because Jerry Meals is one hell of an umpire.”

Meals is also one hell of an honest ump, based on remarks he made later in the day Wednesday about his call that enabled the Atlanta Braves to win a
marathon, 19-inning, 4-3 game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Turner Field. The Braves won after Julio Lugo, tagged above his right kneecap on his thigh
by Pirates catcher Michael McKenry, was called safe by Meals, inexplicably.

After coming into the locker room, I reviewed the incident through our videos that we have in here and after seeing a few of them, on one
particular replay, I was able to see that Lugo’s pant leg moved ever so slightly when the swipe tag was attempted by McKenry. That’s telling me that I was
incorrect in my decision and that he should have been ruled out and not safe.

—Jerry Meals.

He didn’t exactly apologise; there was no “I’m sorry” in the comment, but clearly Meals knows what did happen. Clearly enough, he said it. Let’s give
Meals the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge his regret. He wasn’t out there looking to job the Pirates. But let’s also acknowledge that the blown call
is still further evidence on behalf of replay.

Just as clearly, there’s still a lot of baseball to play yet. Though they were surely right to protest the Tuesday/Wednesday outcome, it’s on the Pirates to
do exactly what they suggested themselves in protesting—shake it off and play their best baseball the rest of the way. To the extent that nobody can argue
one blown call at the plate triggered a pennant race collapse for a plucky team that’s spent the season thus far defying everyone else’s expectations.

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As things turned out, the 2011 Pirates did end up faltering down that stretch. Nobody will ever know whether that blown call at the end of that marathon
game knocked the wind out of their sails, but then (the human element being what it is) it might not necessarily be a surprise to discover it actually might
have affected the team's morale somewhat.