Replay rules need review
EVEN on one of those rare times when a replay challenge can correct an egregiously bad call — the rule’s only original intent — it gets it wrong.
Saturday, a force-out call against the Athletics was so wrong — third baseman Rougned Odor was clearly off the bag when he took the throw — that even Yankees announcers Michael
Kay and Ken Singleton called this an easy one, the call would be reversed.
But apparently based on evidence that didn’t exist, it wasn’t. Inning over. Kay, Singleton and the audience were left flabbergasted — even if being flabbergasted by what MLB has become has become a common reaction.
Yet many still support replay when used to rule on microscopic, slow-motion, freeze-framed, oh-so-close decisions because the rule “gets it right.”
➤ Wisconsin has dismissed freshman football recruit Loyal Crawford and suspended freshman tailback Antwan Roberts, the latter recruited from a prep school in Tennessee, for a fight that included the brandishing of a knife — Crawford claims he was attacked by Roberts.
The episode, cops reported, occurred in a Wisconsin dorm.
How’d you like to send your kid to college — and Wisconsin’s a good one, academically tough and expensive for out-of-staters (unless they can play football or basketball) — to learn that the college recruited “student-athletes” capable of participating in a knife fight in a dorm?
➤ Baseball’s Biblical Wisdom: After a woman with two young girls, presumably her kids, in her company chased down a foul ball at Citi Field last week, an SNY camera showed the girls eager to examine the baseball. “King Solomon’s baseball,” said Gary Cohen.
And don’t forget, the first words in the Bible reference baseball: “In the big inning ...”
➤ Thursday, after “Thumbs-Down” Javy Baez’s high fly to right with two out in the eighth in a one-run game was dropped — the seventh error in another dreadfully played MLB game — it seemed that “Joggin’ Javy” should’ve been on second instead of first. But on SNY, visually and verbally, it never came up.
➤ With games such as Northern Colorado at Colorado, Colgate at Boston College, Akron at Auburn and Kent State at Texas A&M, the paid-to-lose Bowl-Eligible NCAA season has begun.
➤ Reader Alfred Angiola writes that, at the risk of ridicule as an old coot, he still can’t imagine Gil Hodges explaining that his players “are out looking around home plate for Jerry Grote’s diamond earring.”