Little League to Use Replay!???
Image by M@nnie via FlickrI Hate Replay!
First, let me got on the record as a HUGE hater of instant replay! I hate it in football because it slows the pace of the game, it often kills momentum, and it makes referees change the way they make their calls.
The Great Debate
Of course there is a huge debate about whether to use replay in baseball or not. I was watching a Yankees game a while back and I forgot who it was, but they pulled a hook down the third base line. The ball appeared to be foul. The UMP called it a home run! Every camera angle had the ball hooking around in front of the foul poll, it was obviously not a home run! Or so we thought!
There was one guy who was sitting next to the foul poll. He ended up w/ the ball. He was swearing up and down through his body language that it was a home run. They sent their roving reporter out there w/ a camera and on the very far left (foul side) of the poll was an obvious ball mark. The ump got it right! Replay got it wrong!
Absorb It
I don’t really care if the call is right or wrong. Whatever the ump says it is, it is. Move on. Mike Soccia, manager of the Angels, said it best when the ball obviously hit the dirt when they were playing the White Sox in the championship game a few years back, "We didn’t play good enough to absorb it." One bad call does not a game lose, why would you want your momentum killed right after you hit a home run?
The pitcher is shaken, the next batter has a huge advantage, why do you want to stop the game to painstakingly review whether it was a home run or not? The ump called it what he saw it to be. That’s what it is, move on and play through it!
From the Pres.
From the Little League Website I copied this quote from the Little League International President:
“We are able to do this because all 32 games are televised on the ESPN family of networks,” Stephen D. Keener, President and Chief Executive Officer of Little League Baseball and Softball, said. “As we have seen even in the professional ranks, these calls are among the most difficult for umpires to make, for a variety of reasons. Using video replay, in very limited situations and on an experimental basis for one year, simply gives us a better chance to get these calls right. In 2009, we will evaluate the program and decide if it will be used again.”
Do you smell a fish? I do! If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, probably a duck!
I have been watching the Little League World Series since I was a kid. For those of you counting, that makes about 40 years now. I cannot remember one single controversy over a home run in the Little League World Series.
The fence is so short, there are not strange angles or areas as there are in the major leagues, and the 5th and 6th umpires are right on top of the plays. Why do we need this?
The Cynic in Me
hmmmmm….The cynic in me remembers that last year ESPN gave Little League Millions of Dollars to cover their World Series. In exchange, Little League demanded they cover every division. A great deal for both parties!
But, who covers more Major League games than any other network? ESPN, of course, might it be in their best interest to have instant replay in the major leagues? What does that mean for them? An additional commercial spot! The "Chevy instant replay challenge" maybe? Do you think Little League decided on replay or do you think that ESPN sold the idea to them? My money is on the latter.
All for Making Money
Most of you know I make my money in the advertising business. I understand why both parties would do this. Again, win-win for everyone. I just hate replay, it isn’t natural, it doesn’t belong in any games, ESPECIALLY LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL GAMES!
I already have my concerns about 11/12 year olds playing in front of 50,000 people. Talk about pressure! Now you are going to subject them to the excruciating painstaking wait of whether a ball was a home run or not? What about the kid on the mound? What if this is to decide the game? An instant call is devistating, but kids get over it quickly, but are you telling me that if there is a foul ball in the bottom of the 6th of the championship game in a 1-1 tie you are going to stop the game for 5 minutes and review the shot?
He’s Just a Little Boy
Then what if you determine it is a home run? The image of that kid breaking down will be capture for a lifetime! After standing out there in the middle of 50,000 people on national television waiting for what must seem an eternity you are going tell this kid "no that wasn’t a foul ball, that was a home run and you lost the game". He will be devistated! Tarnished for life! And what if the call is so close that it could have gone either way? This is just wrong! Have we forgotten that these are little boys out there? They are not grown men.
I am all about teaching life lesson and building character. But instant replay is not the way to do it. Let the kids play, the umps ump, the coaches coach, and the parents have heart failure. Last year instant replay showed that umpires were consistantly calling strikes 6" off the plate on the outside corner. That’s what we need to fix! BUT NOT WITH REPLAY!
Do you think replay belongs in sports?
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We Are The Champions, My Friend
A Guest Post from
(AKA E. Peevie of the Green Room )
You’ve been following the debate , of course, about whether or not I should bring C. Peevie back to Chicago from our idyllic vacation resort in South Haven for the final Little League championship game.
Well, as I reported in The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-are-champions.html ), the family was supportive, so we made the hot, un-air-conditioned drive, and arrived with about an hour to spare. I got comfortable in my folding camp chair in prime real estate behind the Brewers’ bench, where I sat for exactly one scoreless inning.
Then C. Peevie got up to bat with one runner on base and one out in the top of the second. I’ve mentioned that he’s been struggling at the plate, and when he whiffed the first pitch, my stomach lurched.
Moments later my boy scorched a line drive over the third baseman’s head and past the left fielder for a triple—driving in the first run of the game. I left my middle-aged mom self behind and jumped about 17 feet in the air. “Go, Zeusk*!” I screamed. “Run like the wind!”
C. Peevie has many strengths, abilities and assets. Speed is not one of them. And yet that boy—my boy—pulled off a triple, setting the stage for two more runs that inning. The Brewers led until the fifth inning, when the Twins pulled ahead by one run. By the end of the fifth inning, every fan on both sides of the field was standing, cheering every pitch, every play, every blink.
Coach Lou moved C. Peevie around, starting him in left, playing him in center and right, and a couple of innings at first base. Sometime around the sixth inning, he fielded a sharply hit ground ball about eight feet from the first base bag. He knocked it down, and fumbled it for a second. The crowd roared.
Then we saw the kind of smart teamwork that coaches dream about: C. Peevie realized he couldn’t pick up the ball and get back to the bag quickly enough to make the out. Abandoning his feckless fumbling, he darted to the bag. Meanwhile, the second baseman, in heads-up play, scooped up the ball and tossed it over to C. P. at first for the out. On the Brewers’ sidelines, we passed the defibrillator down the row.
Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, the Brewers faced a desperate one-run deficit. Batting for the last time in regulation play, the Coach’s son Tommygun led off, smartly accepting a walk. He easily stole second on a dropped pitch, and the fans urged the batter, my friend ChefKat’s son and wielder of a Big Bat, Nick, to bring him home.
Another dropped pitch, and Tommygun headed for third! We all stopped breathing, and yet somehow we were screaming at the same time! The Twins’ catcher threw the runner out, and we were two outs away from earning a respectable but disappointing second place trophy.
Big Bat Nick came through with a crucial single, and the next batter drove him home, tying the game four-four. We held them in the bottom of the seventh and went into extra innings. Honestly, I do not even remember any details after this point, probably because my brain was too deprived of oxygen, except that there was no score in the eighth, and the Brewers scored three runs in the ninth, and held the Twins scoreless to take the crown.
The boys celebrated with zero-proof champagne, and the adults celebrated with real bubbly. I was so grateful that C. Peevie had this experience, and I do believe the Little League Coach is right: it will remain distinct in his memory for many years, and perhaps even for the rest of his life.
And now I’ve made a deposit in my memory bank as well, one that will make me grin every time I revisit it. The trip was definitely worth it.
*Zeuskarelli is my weird and unlikely nickname for C. Peevie.
(Read more from The Little League Mom, AKA E. Peevie, in The Green Room , where she writes about parenting, politics, and other p- and non-p topics, and even posts a little poetry periodically.)
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