There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not Major League Baseball should have reviewed the call that kept Armando Gallarraga from perfection last week. There are basically two camps on this — one that sees baseball in its purest form, with flaws of the umpires as a part of that pure game, and another that sees the game in its purest form when the calls are most accurate and when officiating has the least amount of influence on any particular outcome (be it a victory or a personal feat). I don’t really know what my preference is on this. I’m bummed that a guy didn’t get a perfect game that he seemingly deserved (I didn’t see the other 8 innings to see if any other calls were close and went his way), but my form of baseball purism is that a win is a win.
Most importantly, though, neither side is morally superior. That is, I don’t think there is a moral absolute in play here. The fact of the matter is that baseball used to simply have to put up with the flaws of the umpires. That was 1910. In 2010 we can put together all the different technological advances and more or less prove that the call was a mistake, and we can give witness to anyone who might have doubted it with the naked eye. (Note: I’m sure there are a few people out there who will still say he was safe, in the same way they can look at an ultrasound and say the unborn child is something less than that.) Because instant replay is in its infancy with baseball, and only used in the most rare of occurrences, the baseball “purist” might state that we can’t use instant replay for that. If tomorrow we adopt a measure that integrates instant replay more like football (which I am not advocating for — just making an example), 10 years from now we will all think it was crazy this call wasn’t reversed. It’s a matter of perspective, not moral superiority.
All the baseball “experts” in the world won’t convince me this is an issue dealing with absolutes. If it was, we would either have outrage on every bad call that was ever made, or we would never have the right to complain about a single bad call (depending on which of the two aforementioned camps you are in).
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