Two nights ago the Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves played a 19-inning game with playoff implications. It ended on a play at the plate that commentators immediately screamed was wrong. As has become the routine, people called once again for the use if instant replay to fix the "terrible calls" by umpires.
One of those (literally) yelling yesterday for instant replay was ESPN's Mike Greenberg, who used the typical line about the ridiculousness of preserving the "human element." "In every other area of life we try to mitigate human weakness, but not in major league baseball," he said.
This morning, however, he changed his tune, though without acknowledging it. When it was pointed out that by NFL standards requiring "indisputable visual evidence" to overturn a call this one probably would not have been changed, Greenberg said that in this case the approach should be different. "When the throw beats the runner by five feet like this one did, I think the umpire needs to see indisputable evidence that the defensive player did not tag the runner ... that's just common sense." When Greenberg's partner, Mike Golic, disagreed, and said that the only question should be whether the tag was actually applied ("we see a lot of phantom tags in baseball") Greenberg insisted that the situation should matter.
In other words, it's not only a factual question (whether the catcher tagged the runner or not), but an interpretive one (whether the situation ought to call for a default judgment.) That's something only humans can do.
And despite the vehemence of those on talk radio, I'm still not certain the guy was out.
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