Wait, It's the 21st Century?

I was glancing at Twitter on my way up from grabbing lunch when I saw a Sportscenter headline pop up that made me happy. It's been a long time coming.

I put together a list of things I wanted to improve in baseball last year, but looking back I've continued to realize that it was far from complete. I've addressed umpire incompetence a couple times on this forum, so I'm all for replay. The only caveat is, I want it to be done right. Hopefully the owners want it done right as well and make sure that this system can be implemented in a way to help the game.

In a way, I kind of wanted a challenge system as long as it was done well, so I was a little leery when I initially heard that each manager would be given three challenges a game. Then I learned the conditions and that you only get one in the first six innings of a game, and then two for the remainder of the game. Ultimately, I think this will work. It limits stoppages early and allows for greater weight to be placed towards the end of games. Every out of a game is technically worth the same, but later situations are under much more scrutiny. Such is the nature of sports.

AP Photo/ Mark Duncan

The limit also keeps us from overanalyzing every play. Despite Angel Hernandez's best efforts, I still believe that umpires make the correct call far more often than not. The issue I have with them more so lies in their lack of accountability (or so we seem to perceive,since umpires face consequences; we just don't know what they are) than the fact that they make mistakes. They're human. It happens. We just want it to happen less, and when it does happen, for them to drop the aura of self-righteousness. With the new plan, we can hopefully get rid of some of these mistakes and thus cut down on some of the appearances of umpires making spectacles of themselves.

Ultimately though, there's going to be one or two loud opposing arguments. One of them will be from the purists who claim that replay would "remove the human element from the game", an argument that really doesn't make any sense. Keeping a tradition around just for the sake of tradition may seem noble, but when so many stories about baseball revolve around controversial calls (when we're not talking steroids), you know it's not a good tradition. That said, I'm fine with umpires continuing to call balls and strikes. I don't mind the slight differences in strikes, as long as it's not ridiculous (giving a couple inches outside the standard zone is fine, but calling a strike on a pitch a foot outside is insane). It's rare that ball and strike calls by an umpire have a huge impact as compared to calls in the field.

The only complaints that might come louder would be from fans who don't want the game slowed down any more than it already is. While I get that, replays don't take as long to do as people think. When managers come out to argue, we end up seeing replays on TV anyway. Why not make it productive? In the other major sports, replay reviews more often than not don't take very long to do, so the time additions wouldn't be much of a factor. More time issues arise from batters stepping out of the box after every pitch or pitchers taking forever between pitches. Changes in rules there would probably more than make up for any time lost for reviews. How many games are going need more than one anyway? Probably not many.

Obviously, the specifics need to be carefully reviewed before a final decision is reached by the 30 clubs. But the specifics we have so far all look pretty good in theory. It's 2013. It's time for Major League Baseball to start acting like it.