The speed with which baseball is hoping to implement instant replay on home run calls has raised several questions, none bigger than the process of review. Will it be up to the managers to challenge calls, a la the NFL, or up to a fifth video replay umpire? Neither, according to a memo to the umpire's union leaked to ESPN. The system would most resemble hockey's system of reviewing disputed goals at the league office.
According to the memo, the replay will not be done on-site at each ballpark, but in a replay war room at Major League Baseball's Advanced Media offices in New York. The chief of each umpiring crew would have means to communicate with the war room directly.The biggest difference from the hockey system is that the decision to use instant replay would belong exclusively to the crew chief, not the office. Based on what the war room passes along and what the crew chief saw in the first place, he would then make his decision which would be binding.
I'm all for instant replay on "boundary calls." The idea is to avoid another embarrassing and preventable mistake on a home run call which is noble and correct. I just wish baseball would focus on the instant part a little less. New systems have kinks that need to be ironed out, better to do that in games that don't count. It's the right decision but I can't say it's being handled correctly.
