Sunday, October 11, 2009

Goliath won; close calls need a change

The Twins were swept out of a best-of-five series against the mighty New York Yankees. After what the Twins did to win the AL Central title, I think you have to believe anything's possible. That's why the games aren't played on paper.

Obviously I wanted the Twins to win, but it just wasn't in the cards. Too many things were stacked against them. The biggest factor about their opponent? They're the Yankees. That's it.

Game 2 was one of the most heartbreaking losses in quite awhile for the Twins. It's hard to even rehash all the things that contributed to the Yanks coming away with yet another walk-off win, 4-3 in 12 innings.

What went wrong
Among the contributors: The Twins left 17 men on base, Carlos Gomez cost the Twins an early run with sloppy base running, Jason Kubel made Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan look bad (he had nine strikeouts for the series and went 1-for-14), September-Delmon Young still didn't appear and Joe Nathan threw a cookie to Alex Rodriguez (who has the Twins to thank for ending his postseason slump) for a blown save.

And one of the biggest factors was when the left-field line umpire Phil Cuzzi blatantly made the wrong call on a ball hit by Joe Mauer.

Officiating played a role, whether big or small, in the outcome of a game. Judging from many reactions after the game, everyone seemed to agree that it was a horrible call that cost the Twins a run. (Umpiring crew chief Tim Tschida did admit after the game that upon further video review, the call was made incorrectly.)

But the common consensus is also that the Twins beat themselves with the above-mentioned reasons, and you can't put the loss solely on the umpire. While I can see all the valid points of these arguments, I still have a lot of trouble with the missed call. I don't care what else happened in the course of the game; that call needs to be made. It just needs to.

He's right there
What makes it even harder to swallow is the fact that Major League Baseball employs a six-man umpiring crew for the postseason, adding an extra pair of eyes down each of the foul lines. So Cuzzi's sole purpose in that game was to be close enough to the baseball to make the correct call.

And he was close enough. The replay shows him in a good position to see the ball, which hit the ground about a foot or so in fair territory. Not to mention that the left fielder touched the bouncing ball with his glove, also in fair territory.

After Mark Teixeira ended the game with a homer off of struggling reliever Jose Mijares, I got the same sickening feel I had after the Tommie/Johnnie football game at St. Thomas last season. The Tommies appeared to have a touchdown in the final minutes of play, which would have given them the win, but the call was blown, admittedly so by the MIAC officials the next day.

It's a tough feeling, especially when the officiating gets in the way. I'm glad that at least the officials in both instances admitted the mistake, but so what? The game is over. They couldn't give the "W" to the Tommies, just as they couldn't make the series 1-1 instead of the actual 0-2.

I know, I know, there are so many other factors and what-if's? within the game that you can't solely blame the officiating. I'm not suggesting that that is the only reason for the loss in either case. You could call out just about any small detail in the game to have gone differently in order for the outcomes to change. But when you do something right to try and get a win for your team and it gets taken away from you, that hurts.

Time for a change
Sports will always have controversy with officiating and the use of video replays. It's the nature of the process because the officials are human. They do make mistakes and their calls can sometimes be subjective. But should teams and players have to suffer?

Major League Baseball instituted the instant replay review for the ruling of home runs in 2008. There has been talk from fans and sports critics of expanding the replay system, but nothing is in place. One of the biggest negatives is that baseball is such a slow/long game already, and cluttering it up with reviews would only make the games longer. Fair enough.

My solution? Go with some sort of challenge system like what is done in football and tennis at the professional levels. If a manager disagrees with a call, then they should have the opportunity to challenge it (there would be a challenge limit) and ask the umpires to look at the video review. I don't have all the little details worked out, but if it works in other sports, there's no reason they can't try a similar system in the Major Leagues.

Officials are generally good at what they do, and they do take a lot of criticism for doing their job, but bad calls that do get made should not be costing teams plays, hits or victories.

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