← Columns

Instant Replay

The Source

I screw up. A lot. Rushing behind the curtains during a play rehearsal I loudly and sternly started chewing out whatever actor was making so much noise backstage. My high school cast cowered against the back wall as their eyes turned to the culprit. A pig. A live pig in a cage for the production of L’il Abner. I watched one of my Triopia graduates in a Jacksonville Theatre Guild production and afterwards congratulated him, saying, “Why weren’t you in my shows in high school?” He looked at me and said, “I was in four of them.” I once called a friend to apologize for missing his surprise birthday party on the previous evening. Wrong date. The “surprise,” or what was now left of it, was that evening. Thank God there’s no camera following me…you….us around. No slo-mo instant replay, no split-screen, no reaction shots kept forever on video tape and replayed endlessly to a nation of nosey onlookers. That’s why I pity the poor umpires. True, the ump-ing in the baseball playoffs was not stellar, but once again the talking heads of television are over-reacting by calling for the use of instant replay in baseball. I feel sorry for the NFL officials when a request is made for reviewing a call on video. No matter their age or experience or level of football expertise, they stand there with a, “Oh, I’m gonna be in trouble now,” look on their faces. Pity the poor umps. Hey! Everybody blows it! On the job, at home with the family, driving down the road. Would you want all your driving practices videotaped as you read your mail, check your phone, send a text, or simply check your makeup in four lanes of traffic? Pity the poor ump. No matter what salaries the New York Yankees play, a sport is still game, and being a game it’s prone to the variations of any game. Did the fullback cause the rain that caused him to slip that caused him to miss the pass that caused his team to lose? No. It wasn’t a fault of his ability, it just was. When the centerfielder goes back for the long fly ball and the St. Louis sun suddenly blinds him did he cause this? Nope. It just was. As long as it’s a sport and as long as it involves human beings, there will be bobbles. Mistakes. Bone-headed goofs. Pity the poor ump. After all, we could go completely electronic with all our sports. It would be simple enough to install electronic eyes on football goalposts, the nets of hockey and soccer, and around the strike zone of a baseball player that would tell us with absolute accuracy whether a score has been made or a strike has been thrown, but where’s the fun in spending an entire game watching an electronic device to see who’s winning? The sport of fencing garbs the players in suits designed to record a “hit” by the opposing swordsman. The same could be done with basketball uniforms to call the fouls with complete sureness, but do we want that? And if we do, then why not go all the way? Our computer technology can now compute every statistic about every ball team, right down to their sniffles on that particular day and their chances of tripping over the foul line. Why not such plug all these stats into a computer, tell the teams to stay home, and proclaim the winner digitally? Of course the biggest drawback in letting technology creep into sports is that once the game has made completely sterile and goof-proof, there’s no one to blame. I can remember riding home on the Perry High School basketball bus after suffering defeat at the hands of Routt or ISD or Meredosia (we were extremely trounce-able) and complaining loudly how the referees had snatched the victory right out of our rosined paws because of their poor judgment, or more likely their obviously being related to members of the opposing team. We departed the villain’s school abject losers, but by the time we’d crossed the Meredosia Bridge we were simply among the poor and oppressed noblemen of the earth. Take away the ref’s judgment calls and we’d have been losers all the way across the Chambersburg bottom. Face it…we need the ref’s to blame. It’s absolutely no fun yelling at an instant replay machine. The brag factor is much greater if you grew up in the age before video recorders. Your high school basketball games can now be recalled as glorious triumphs of the human spirit, your football games can be touted to the younger generation as “the days when we really had a team!” and your stage performances can be deemed truly Broadway-worthy. But if you are young enough to have your basketball game, your play, your volleyball tournament taped, you are stuck with the cold, hard truth. You really weren’t as good as your memory would have you believe. Pity the poor umps.