The Five to Seven Longest Minutes in Baseball: Replay

Every now and then during Springtime, when the great state of Illinois has a day with a warm sun and cool breeze, you can always bet that people will be flocking to the city in order to see the Cubs play at Wrigley Field or the White Sox play at U.S. Cellular Field. I was lucky enough to go and see my team, the White Sox, play on April 2nd against the Minnesota Twins. That day was incredibly cold and windy when we got in the ball park. I believe it was in the 7th inning when a fly ball was hit toward center fielder Adam Eaton. As any player would, he centered himself to where the ball would land, caught the ball, and then dropped it as he was pulling it out. The umpire signaled that Eaton had caught it and that the hitter was out, but Twins manager Ron Gardenhire wanted to argue the call so he used his challenge on the play. We then had to sit and wait for almost five minutes for the call to be made by the officials in New York. Finally, the call came in that it was an error by Eaton and in came the booing and cursing. But despite the call, people seemed much more upset with the fact that we had to sit around and wait for five minutes for a call to be made on the play. That was when I realized the truth: MLB challenge replay is going to become a big issue.

Now this was two weeks ago, but the challenge rule has popped up in a few more games since then and has stirred up the pot for it's longevity. Actually, in the first two weeks, baseball had more than 80 replay challenges. That's about five times each week more than what officials predicted when the ruling on the challenge passed. The replay challenge are said to average a time of about 1 minute and 35 seconds. HA! Really?! Although the challenges themselves may average 1m39s, the stoppage of play that comes from it lengthens the average replays to about two to three minutes. Lucky for me, I got be apart of one that almost went five minutes on a cold and windy day with no coat on. Oh, what fun I was having at the ball park. The solution is just simple: Speed up the replay decisions. Now I don't know how this system in New York to watch the replays works, but I get the feeling it's nothing more than a few guys in front of some screens, watching the play in question on a continuous reel, and trying to vote heads or tails on the situation. But, I could be wrong and it could be a much more efficient system then that. It just seems to me that if it is taking so long to get back to the action, then something in the system just is not working and that is a problem. Another problem I see as well is that even the replays are not very accurate. Sure it helps because the umpires and officials get a second look to see if they may have mistaken something, but I've seen times where even I find it hard to tell from my TV at home on a slowed replay. But, the focus is on the length of these replays. Now yes, the game of baseball is lengthy already because there is no set time that it'll end which makes the game go very slow, but those who love and respect the game, they will stick around even through the extra innings to see a game all the way through to the end. The other issue in long replays is that sooner or later, the players will become frustrated, just as the fans and even some managers are, that it is taking so long to make a call on a play. I mean consider the situation: the pitcher for your team has struck out the last four batters and has a no hitter going in the top of the 8th, then a grounder hit to second base comes in and the throw goes to first but it seems that the runner may have beat out the throw. So the manager challenges the play and play stops for about two or three minutes. Now whatever the call may turn out to be, that pitcher of yours that what on a hot streak may find himself going cold and antsy because he had to wait all that time instead of just resetting and firing off another pitch. Now, this is just my interpretation on the rules. It could be wrong or right or whatever. The point I just want people to understand is simply that the idea to have a replay system in baseball was created for good reasons and the best intentions in order to better the game, but it seems that baseball may now have quite a predicament on their hands if they cannot find a way to make things move along a little bit faster.