Baseball may be an old-fashioned game little changed from the days of Ty Cobb and Shoeless Joe Jackson, but underneath the green grass of the outfield and crushed brick of the infield now lies a high-tech labyrinth that allows umpires to double-check if they called a play correctly.
These old-time players, and probably most from today, would not know what to make of the MLB Replay Operations Center that is located in the Chelsea section of New York City. The 900-square-foot installation looks more like a high-tech sports bar with its 37 HD displays and long counters where umpires sit and review plays than a place where the nation's pastime is viewed.
The room holds 42.8 tons of gear strung together with 172 miles of video cable. The entire place took more than 32,000 hours of labor to complete.
So, despite the insane lengths baseball has taken to ensure it has a first-class operation, not everyone is happy, which is only to be expected when every replayed call is going to make someone mad.
Managers have taken to the review system and are not shy about popping out of the dugout to try and give their team an extra chance on a close call. As of April 9, 52 plays had been checked, with 20 calls being overturned. When a manager decides to use his replay option, the game umpire contacts the MLB Replay Operations Center. Here umpires sit before a huge bank of displays showing every game that is currently taking place. In each case, the umpire can ask for several angles on each play and decide whether the on-field official made the correct call.
The MLB version differs from the NFL, where the referee observes the replay on the field himself.
In each case when a call was replayed it made one team or the other happy or upset.
"C'mon, MLB, that's terrible, and you can quote me on that," Los Angeles Angels outfielder Josh Hamilton said Tuesday after the newly emphasized transfer rule went against him in a loss to the Seattle Mariners.
Former manager Jim Leyland, who helped design the system, said patience is required and the current form of instant replay is not set in stone, but will be improved upon as time goes on.
"People have to be patient with it," Leyland said. "I really like it. All of a sudden, everything is fair and square. Not that it wasn't before, because the human element was there for all the teams."
The removal of the human element in favor of technology also irks some players and managers, but others realize it is better to use the technology at hand than have an incorrectly called play decide an important game
"I sort of like the game the way it was," said Joe Torre, former Yankee manager and current MLB vice president, but he decided two years ago when a botched call cost his Yankees a game against the Tigers during the playoffs that instant replay was needed.
"That's when I realized that we certainly can't ignore the technology," he said.
