I love ESPN’s David Schoenfield — he’s been one of my favorite baseball writers for years and years — but I think he’s off the mark on his post from last night about the end of the Pirates-Giants game that ended with a walkoff instant replay ruling:
Here’s what I’m thinking after the end of the Giants-Pirates game that ended with Starling Marte called out at home plate and then called safe, giving the Pirates the not-so-dramatic walk-off reversal: Isn’t this exactly how we don’t want games to end? With a committee meeting?
I don’t like the flow interruption of replay challenges any more than Schoenfield does, but isn’t the entire point to get the calls right? And, even if those committee meetings can be grating on a random out call in the third inning, shouldn’t we have more tolerance for them — hell, even infinite tolerance for them — on calls that literally decide the game like the one in the Pirates-Giants game?
Indeed, one of the biggest blown calls of the past few years — a call that helped fuel the fire of instant replay as much as anything else — came on just such a call. What’s more, it came in a Pirates game! It even made the national news:
I’m all for nitpicking the mechanics of replay and sighing heavily at manager challenges, committee meetings and the like. But a game-deciding call like this is exactly the thing for which we want instant replay. If it postpones the Pirates’ celebration by a minute or two or, even worse, prevents a game that should be over from going on into extra innings, well, good.
