a poor player

Dunkirk NY – October is always a stressful month for me. Usually I am directing something for the department; this year it’s the opera La Bohème. The days get shorter and shorter, which means time to think about dealing with my annual bout of seasonal affective disorder. Whatever paperwork or semester projects I have in the hopper are usually at the peak point of their time frame; this year it’s a re-designed BA degree on top of document preparation for our decennial accreditation. Last but not least, it’s playoff baseball season, which means I will be up every night until one in the morning trying to watch every inning of the playoffs live.

The New Yankee Stadium

I have absolutely no qualms about admitting I am a fan of the the New York Yankees. They are my hometown team, and I’ve been following them since I’ve been 8 years old, since 1960. So after having missed the postseason last year, the Yankees are back, facing the Minnesota Twins, a wonderfully scrappy team that plays with guts, guile, determination and heart. They are fun to watch. But not as much fun as the Yankees, who won 103 games this season and are perhaps one of the most fun Yankee teams to watch in the last 10 years.

I find a lot of similarities between theatre and baseball, and quite often in my acting classes I will make comparisons between the fundamentals of acting and the fundamentals of baseball. The thing I like most of all, though, is the human factor of both endeavors. Baseball is a game that, up until last season, was played without the assistance of much technology. But in the middle of last season, a decision was made to bring in instant replay for certain types of calls; home runs and fan interference. I watched the first game in which it was ever used, at Yankees Stadium, to call a home run. I can tell you that, even though the call went the Yankee’s way, I was very, very dismayed. I knew I was watching the beginning of the end.

So in watching the Twins-Yankees matchup this past Friday night, in the 11th inning, Phil Cuzzi, the left-field umpire, blows an obvious call, ruling a ball that fell one foot inside the foul line a foul ball. It robbed the great Joe Mauer of a double, and potentially the opportunity to score a run and take the lead in a tied game. He went on to single in that at-bat, the Twins went on to load the bases, and the Yankees went on to pitch out of a bases-loaded no-out situation without the Twins scoring a run. Of course, Twins fans are upset by the call, believing they were robbed and that Phil Cuzzi is in the employ of the Steinbrenners (who own the Yanks), and the howls have begun for the introduction of instant replay so that umpires can “get the call right.”

I am very much against the introduction of instant replay any further into the game, and would be quite happy to see it eliminated altogether. That won’t happen, because any time an innovation is introduced into the game, it tends to stick. The designated hitter is still, I believe, an “experiment” by Major League Baseball. So let me tell you why I think instant replay is a terrible idea.

• Everyone involved in the game makes mistakes. Matt Holliday of the St. Louis Cardinals dropped a routine fly ball that cost his team the game (some say the series). Carlos Gomez of the Twins made a baserunning mistake that cost his team a run. Jonathan Papelbon of the Red Sox cannot get a third out in the top of the ninth, even when he has three consecutive hitters down with two strikes. Why, then, are umpires not allowed to make mistakes and have those mistakes be considered part of the game without the howling for instant replay? The mistakes they make should automatically be just as much a part of the game as the mistakes of the players. They are as human as the players, so why treat them any differently?
• By rule, the umpires are right, even when they are wrong. Umpires are charged with applying the rules of the game. But in any human endeavor where people have to apply rules and judgment, you have to expect mistakes. Baseball would be nothing but anarchy if umpires did not have the absolute authority they have. Since, by rule, they have this authority, and everyone playing the game accepts this convention (even though there are numerous heated arguments throughout the season), umpires are right, even when they are wrong, even when they are obviously wrong. That’s the rule, and there is no need to change that by bringing in a technology that is considered “more right” than an umpire.
• 99% of all games played are not won or lost on one “wrong call” by an umpire. The only instance where I can think of this in every game I’ve seen was when young Jeffrey Maier reached over the wall and pulled in a home run hit by Derek Jeter. Other than that, in every game you can always find numerous instances where teams failed to take advantage of situations that would have won them the game. Sure, Phil Cuzzi missed a call, and it was bad that he did so (and you can bet no one felt worse than Cuzzi), but the Twins also went 5-13 with runners in scoring position and left 17 runners on base (one of the Twins called that “a small village”). Not only that, but the Twins had bases loaded and no one out in that same inning, and failed to score. They were as much victims of their own inability to execute as they were of Cuzzi’s blow call.
• The desire to “get the call right,” while admirable, is misplaced. As a society, we are obsessed with “getting it right.” But what, exactly, is “right”? How is that defined? One of baseball’s great and enduring aspects is its philosophical component. Many writers have written in poetic and philosophical terms about the nature of baseball. In every situation where a blown call has resulted in an unintended effect, while we as mere humans may not be privy to the reasons why, the blow call is probably “right” in ways we do not understand, but are left to ponder. That;s part of the philosophical beauty of baseball, and instant replay would ruin that altogether.
• The “slippery slope” of technology will have no end. Once you start down the road where you argue that technology will help us “get it right,” you have now opened the door to applying that theory to several other aspects of the game. So why stop with instant replay for boundary calls? Why not let QwestTek take over for the home plate umpire? Wouldn’t that get more ball and strike calls right? Why not place pressure-sensitive foul lines down rather than chalking the lines with lime? Why not have bases that would light up to indicate when a runner actually touches a base? Why not require the first baseman to wear a pressure-sensitive glove connected wirelessly to the pressure-sensitive base? That way we’d know exactly in those bang-bang plays at first whether a runner is safe or out. Why not keep on searching for more ways to eliminate umpires altogether? This has to be the logical end if we believe technology will help us “get calls right.”
• Technology cannot solve all of our human problems. I like technology; I use a lot of it. I think it’s often a great aid and companion to human endeavor. But in today’s society we seem to believe that technology will solve everything. We believe it will save the environment, we believe it will further educational opportunities, we believe it will provide us more and better food. We even believe it will give us harder and longer erections. So of course we believe it will give us better calls on the baseball field. And the younger you are, the more you believe this. We simply no longer believe that allowing the human element to thrive over the technological element is a better choice. If there is a technological solution to a perceived problem, the average person in today’s society will jump at it, and the younger you are, the more likely you are to jump. Sometimes they are right, but not always. In this case, I think given that it’s only a game, let’s keep that human element intact.
• And yes, it’s only a game. The drama of a baseball game in the moment makes it feel more important than it truly is. So does the overhyped media coverage. Overblown calls for the introduction of instant replay raise the game to a level it does not deserve. It’s a beautiful and fun game, it’s passionate, it’s exciting, and in many ways it’s far superior to theatre as a human endeavor. But in the end, it’s only a game. Chill, people.

So let’s not get so worked up about Cuzzi’s blown call or any other blown call by umpires. I spent four years as a high school baseball umpire, and I know how it is to be behind that plate or on that field, charged with making those calls. There is plenty of pressure to get those calls right, and you do the best you can, but humanly speaking, it’s impossible. And that impossibility is what keeps the game human, beautiful, and as great as it is.  -twl