Defending the Indefensible

I'm sure that many of you have seen some of the botched calls by umpires in this year's postseason. It's safe to say that we have all heard enough calls for further instant replay in the postseason. That said, I think the League, and specifically the commissioner's office, has done a superb job of recognizing the error and fixing it, but not giving in to outside pressure for a potentially ineffective system.

For a brief intro, I completely agree that further instant replay would limit the umpires, take out the wonderful human element of the game, and completely destroy the tempo of the game. But this post isn't meant as an argument for or against further instant replay. Instead I just wanted to congratulate the commissioner for being very effective in dealing with an important issue.

For those of you who don't know, the commissioner has decided that a veteran crew of umpires will call the World Series this year instead of a new crew getting the opportunity. This was the perfect political move for the commissioner's office to make: the public knows that the commissioner realizes that the blown calls are a problem, and interfere with the game, but also recognizes that getting into a debate about the value of instant replay during the postseason will take away from the great baseball that is being played.

Because of the commissioner's move, we can now talk about how well A-Rod and Ryan Howard have been hitting, or how dominant Cliff Lee and CC Sabathia have been. This is what October baseball is about: excellence is no accident (thank you Truman State for a horribly cheesy slogan). Now that the commissioner has dealt with the issue, let's all sit back and enjoy the wonder of postseason baseball!