Replay is killing sports

Replay reviews is the worst thing to happen to sports in the past ten years.  Fans of replay never tire of saying you have to get the call right.  Never mind that it makes a slow-moving sport slower, the truth must win out!   My response to that remains that the game is losing its soul.  A shortstop makes an error and so does an ump.  And you know what?  The umps usually get it right.  It’s not as if they’re on the take.  As for the close plays…who cares?!  That’s life.

In the 8th inning of the deciding NLDS game five between the Cubs and Nationals – a one run game – Nationals catcher Jose Lobaton was ruled safe on a close pick off play.  Let’s go to the video tape!  The review folks in the New York bunker proceeded to spend five minutes reviewing the play frame by frame, Zapruder-style, to discover that for 1/100 of a second Lobaton’s foot was off the bag.  He was ruled out.

Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post wrote, ‘For 100 years, Lobaton would have been safe, the original and seemingly obvious call, and everybody would have moved on to the next pitch, unbothered and riveted to the eighth inning of a one-run game. As Thursday night became Friday morning, a ballpark engaged in near-forensic video study, squinting to see if Lobaton’s leg had come off the base at a moment when Rizzo’s glove touched him.’ 

I’ve thought all along that replay is ruining sports and nothing has come along to change my opinion.  Between replay reviews, innumerable trips to the mound, and double digit pitching changes leading to five hour (9 inning) post season games, we’re stuck with a sport that is fast becoming unwatchable.

Say what you want about the other three major sports, they aren’t interminable to watch.  What’s the difference between a bunch of technocrats painstakingly making a call – that is still debatable – and an ump making a bang bang call in the moment?  The difference is that one is anti-climatic (and still sometimes wrong) and the other is exciting.

The NBA Finals and the Warriors quest for greatness

It’s been a monumental season for the Golden State Warriors.  They won a record-setting 73 and proceeded to plow through the first two rounds of the playoffs.  They won an epic 7 game conference final series against an outstanding Thunder team and they now find themselves one win away from their second straight championship.

Tonight’s game 5 featured epic performances by the Cleveland Cavalier’s LeBron James – (41 points, 16 rebounds, and 7 assists + 3 steals and 2 blocks!) and Kyrie Irving  (41 points, 6 rebounds,  3 assists, and 2 steals.)  Yet it seemed like something was missing from the Warriors offense and defense.  Oh yeah…Draymond Green missed the game after being suspended for a specious flagrant foul committed in game 4.

It’s bad enough that the refs have to review every hard foul but to have to wait two days for the league officials to pour over evidence as if it was the Zapruder film adds insult to injury. Am I the only person in the world who hates replay in all sports?  Folks, enough is enough.  This childish obsession with getting it right is killing the game’s momentum.  If the evidence has to be incontrovertible how can a play that takes two days to review be overturned?  It’s even worse in baseball, a sport that is slow enough on its own.

The Warriors were jobbed.  I’m not saying that they would have won game 5 — Curry and Barnes had sub par games and LeBron and Irving were unstoppable.  But wouldn’t it have been nice to see how that game would have played out with the teams at full strength?

Replay is killing sports

In the old days if a referee of umpire made a bad call you steamed about it for a few minutes and moved on.  These days we have to sit in front of our televisions and endure dozens of slow motion replays while neutered officials spend several minutes in front of a monitor deciding whether or not they made the correct ruling.

In last night’s Warriors/Cavaliers finals game 1 there was a play in which Cavs guard, Matthew Dellavedova, went for a steal and ended up accidentally hitting the Warriors, Andre Iguodala in the groin.  Tempers flared but the players didn’t brawl.  Instead the refs went to the video tape, and what had been an exciting, back and forth  contest turned into a snooze-fest as we waited five minutes for things to be sorted out.

And the upshot?  A foul was called on Dellavedova. Not even a flagrant foul.  I ask you, was it necessary to study the play as if it was Talmud to end up calling a non shooting foul?  I don’t know about you but I can live with the occasional bad call if it will spare us the drudgery of waiting for a replay review.

The players make errors all the time.  Refs and umps make errors too – it’s a part of sports.

Replay is especially maddening in baseball, which is a slow game without much action to begin with.  You’d think that the the last thing MLB would want is for the flow of the game to be any slower.  But…here we sit as the once proud umps are reduced to waiting for a ruling handed down from a New York bunker.

Shabby.