Fans, you may have heard about the latest in a long line of "genius" ideas by Major League Baseball's poor excuse for a "Commissioner" Allan H. Selig. According to ESPN, MLB will institute Instant Replay in series starting Thursday. While it will only affect home run calls at the outset, it's believed there will be a "Command Center" at the MLB offices in New York, and in the case of Wrigley Field, any such reviews will likely take place in the umpires' room because the Cubs do NOT have a JumboTron and still have an outdated manual scoreboard in the center field bleachers. I've been a baseball fan for years, and sometimes, games take an eternity because the umps have no clue about where the strike zone REALLY is. While we all want to see the umps get the call right, I don't think replay in MLB is going to work in spite of all the current technology. Replay in MLB is a bad, bad idea.

I don't like it either, mostly due to slippery slope concerns.

As a bit of an aside, the debate over replay and adding time to the game has brought back the age-old argument about the intentional walk, which I have never understood:

"Hey, if you want to speed up the game, for God's sake, don't make the pitcher actually throw four balls for an intentional walk!"

OK, let's break this down. How many intentional walks are there, on average, in a game? Maybe one?

How long does it take to throw those four pitches? I bet it's less than 30 seconds.

Games average three hours long. Saving that 30 seconds results in a less than a third of one percent of the total game time.

So, why do people always bring this up, and usually quite passionately, as a surefire way to speed up the games?

I'm trying to imagine these people... these are people who watch all these three-hour games, sit through all those commercial breaks between innings and at every pitching change, sit though all those throws over to first base, sit through all the hitters stepping out of the box to spit, all the meetings on the mound, etc etc., sitting through all of that patiently and enjoying the relaxing pace of the game, but then when it's time for an intentional walk, DEAR GOD I HAVE TO SIT THROUGH THIS AGAIN????????

Hard to figure...

Make the pitcher throw his four pitches if he wants to walk a batter...I remember watching Ray King fuck up when he was trying to walk Albert and the wild pitch that resulted ended up plating the game winning run...

I don't mind it if they keep it where it's at. We don't need it for a strikezone, it'll make the game too long. Of course, with Bud in charge, you never know what will happen.

Homefield advantage in the world series given to the team with the best instant replay challenge percentage?

Puh-leeze! It's my understanding that Instant Replay is only valid until the World Series, and will have to be agreed to by the MLB Players Association & the World Umpires Association, which is now the union that represents all the umps in Allan H. Selig's Major League Baseball in the offseason. Everybody seems to think it's a good idea, especially in the wake of several blown home run calls earlier this season. IT WILL NOT WORK IN BASEBALL!!! It will only slow down an already slow ballgame! Selig was supposed to speed up the game a few years ago. BALONEY!!!