The Opposition Returns

From time to time a “friend” of CFG — and a Baltimore Orioles fan — weighs in give us his views on CFG posts. Under the title “the Loyal Opposition,” this “friend” offers critiques of CFG. We are pleased to present this, his most recent, posting:

With the same attendence record held in college: I am filing for this communist, idiotic and wasteful blog for the second time in as many years. A forced break from following real journalism, I had to return because “Centerfieldgate” has once again lost it’s way, misreported and become unpatriotic yet again.  The author of “Centerfieldgate” has been on a tear recently over not only umpires, but on the way these umpires are covered. There is no question the call made by Jim Joyce in Detriot was wrong — but to attack Tim Kurkjian for not citing other examples where umpires have influenced games and then parlay it into yet another sad Cubs story is tragic. 

Not only did both ESPN and Kurkjian tell the Pappas story repeated by CFG’s main author, but “Centerfieldgate” forgot to mention that Pappas started his career as . . . a Batlimore Oriole. The great and rising stars: “your” Baltimore Orioles. Once again raising the question of loyality: the author of this rag site is clearly a die hard Cubs fan — but like all Cubs fans has adaopted a new team because of geography. This borders on what some of this country’s finest reporters would call “unpatriotic.” But I digress. The author threw in the fact that the strike zone has changed this year; all following the breaking news article that they could be sick of re-play strike zones.

What is needed is less writing for the sake of writing: rather, a solution. One between umpires (who want baseball to truly improve), and players — who are sometimes caught up in winning pennants, and finding their place in history.

Recently the SEC (of the NCAA) put a time clock in centerfield to keep the pitchers working at a decent pace (twenty seconds to throw a pitch, should the previous pitch reach the catchers mitt untouched) and five seconds for the batter to be ready for the pitch. That means one step out of the box, four seconds, and back in. Thank God, some players are retired: this could work. And it did work — in the NCAA game. The game was played with a quicker pace. Pitchers found a rhythm and batters had to keep their heads in the game. MLB games, especially in the AL East, have been played far too slow: something even the announcers have noticed recently.

Like any final peace treaty there has to be a give and take. And since young Gallaraga pitched a hell of a game (a truly perfect game when you look at the pitches thrown and the lack of 3 ball counts), we need to find a way that veteran umpires are not brought to tears because of one bad historical call. The behavior of Joyce has been nothing short of humbling. He is the model of what a professional umpire is: apologizing to Gallaraga, crying to the press about “costing the kid” the perfect game.

So, here’s my proposal. Managers will have one challenge per game. Since every home team has some futuristic slow-mo device coupled with commentators who seem like they know more about criticizing than providing any useful insight, it shouldn’t take that long to review a play. The umpire crew can huddle and the booth can tell them the way the call went. Same rules as the NFL: “overwhelming evidence.”

It has not been a pleasure solving this problem for this blog: in fact, it’s 15 min of my time I’ll never get back. Like my last relationship . . . the entire thing was a giant waste of time.