Stop protecting MLB's ignorance towards replay

It was nice to see the top sports story today was still Armando Galarraga's perfect-near-perfect game. This will undoubtably be the top story of the baseball season and could have a major impact on the future of instant replay in baseball.

That brings me to Phil Rogers' column in which he claims an overturn of Jim Joyce's unfortunate call at first base would have been "crazy". He writes: "You can't change the call after the fact. The rules of baseball say that judgment calls cannot be appealed, and that's the case, at least until MLB announces it is expanding its limited use of instant replay."

Well guess what? The rules of baseball also say that Jason Donald should have been out at first base, because by definition, the ball beat him to the bag.

Rogers goes on: "If Selig had announced Galarraga, in fact, did have a perfect game, he would have to make a few other changes too. The Cardinals would be awarded the 1985 World Series, which was changed forever by a Don Denkinger call. Milt Pappas would get his perfect game because everyone knows Bruce Froemming squeezed him. Willie Keeler, Pete Rose or someone else would own the game's longest hitting streak because favorable scoring calls helped Joe DiMaggio put together his streak of 56 games in a row."

I've heard a number of people mention Don Denkinger's blown call in the '85 World Series in the last few days. The difference is that Denkinger's call happened with no outs in the 9th inning of Game 6. Even if he had made the correct call, the Royals still had two outs to work with and could still have won the game. Also, the Cardinals' still could have won Game 7 or even pitched over the bad call in Game 6, which is what Galarraga did Wednesday night when he retired the next batter to still get the complete game victory. To say the Cardinals would have to be awarded the '85 World Series is like saying the Cubs should be awarded the '03 NLCS because fan interference should have been called on Steve Bartman. You are completely ignoring all the plays and events that happened afterward.

The uniqueness of this situation is that it came on the final out of the game and reversing it would have had zero impact on the outcome of the game, which Detroit won 3-0. The only one who would have been hurt by a reversal is Donald who would have one less hit to his record. Considering he was out anyway, he wouldn't have much of a case to complain.

As far as Milt Pappas getting squeezed by Froemming, this too is an entirely different situation. Balls and strikes are completely arbitrary and every umpire has their own strike zone. Was it probably a strike? Yes, but there is no line or base that draws a concrete distinction between a good call and a bad call. Balls and strikes can never be determined by replay, at least not yet.

And as for favorable scoring during Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak? Are you kidding me Phil? Baseball always has the ability to change a hit to an error or vis versa. It happens all the time. They had their chance to do so and they didn't.

Rogers notes that general managers barely discussed instant replay in the offseason, but I think it's only a matter of time before its use is expanded in baseball. We're already hearing the same arguments against replay that we heard in every other sport. It will slow down the game. It will take away the human element of the game. How do you decide which calls can or can not be reviewed?

Please, these are the same issues every other sport has dealt with and you don't see the NCAA, NFL, NBA or NHL regretting their decision to use replay. All four institutions have plays that can be reviewed and some that cannot. It's a very successful black and white system that has only made each sport more fair.

In fact, on Wednesday at around the same time Galarraga was hurt by the lack of instant replay in baseball, the Philadelphia Flyers were correctly awarded a goal via instant replay in the most important game of their season. They went on to win 4-3 in overtime.

All the other sports are getting it right. It's about time baseball woke up and followed suit.