The 19th Century Umpire Problem

The Problem

Major League Baseball currently operates in a way that allows the commentators in the booth and the viewers at home to make more accurate calls than the Umpires on the field.

An old-fashioned dust-up

The Backstory

The MLB has always been slow to change.  The National Football League recognized the discrepancy (read: stupidity) long ago in letting viewers at home watch slow motion instant replays on a tough call but not the referees actually responsible for making the correct decision.  Then they did something about it.  But that's to be expected as football has always embraced technology much better than baseball.

If you've never seen this -- George Carlin said everything that ever needs to be said about the differences between the two

Professional baseball has, out of sheer embarrassment, allowed one concession.  They now let umpires review plays when there is a question over whether a ball went to the right of the foul pole or the left, hit the wall or cleared it, or was knocked by a fan.  After a year in which umps called a number of home runs foul balls (just about the biggest and most obvious mistake an umpire can make) the commissioner was kind of backed into a corner.  But there are still a great many important plays that, though obvious on film, cause problems for umpires.  When the Tigers' pitcher Armando Galarraga had his perfect game taken away by a blown call in the ninth inning in 2010, everyone at home knew it right away.  The umpires were the last to find out they'd screwed up.  Bud Selig's fear is that adding replays will slow down what is already seen as a very slow game even more.  It's a legitimate risk, but something needs to be done.

The Solution

There are currently at least four umpires on the field in every MLB game.  There should a be a fifth, a video umpire, who sits in a booth watching the video feed all game.  When the umpires meet on the field to discuss a call, he should be miked in and contributing his opinion based on the replay evidence.  Sometimes it will be conclusive and he will make the call.  Other times it won't and he can defer to the decision of the umps who were close to the action.  But at the end of the game, the umpires will have been privy to all the evidence available, thus saving them from the glaring errors of their recent past (not to mention the death threats.)  And it will not slow down the game in the slightest.

Someone like this guy

Notes

To make sure video isn't used excessively (for balls and strikes for instance, where a nebulous concept like a strike zone is so nuanced that video is never conclusive) I would mandate that the video umpire be miked in only when the umps have a meeting to discuss a call.  This way the video ump will settle disagreements but not take the place of the men on the field.

An alternative to this is the challenge system imposed by the NFL.  Give every manager one challenge per game to use at his discretion.  When they think a call was blown they throw their flag and the umpires look at the replay.  I don't like this as much because it assumes no more than two calls per game will be blown, and it adds another round of commercial breaks to the runtime.  The video umpire solution takes no more time (so no more commercials) and can handle any amount of screw-ups by the officiating crew.