At the last possible moment, the ball hooked just to the left of the base of the foul pole. It caromed sharply to the right after hitting a railing and dropped behind the fence. It appeared clearly to be a foul ball and, as the tabloid television shows like to say, it was all Caught On Tape!

The problem was that third-base umpire Dale Scott didn't have the zoom lens at his disposal. Or the slo-mo. Or the high-def.

Pretty soon, he will. And that's a good thing.

Scott called the ball fair and Victorino had a two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh inning last night at Citizens Bank Park and the Marlins' lead was sliced in half. That's not a reflection on the well-respected Scott. It is, instead, the human element that those who oppose the use of instant replay like to talk about.

Asked if that was the kind of call in which replay would have been helpful, Scott didn't hesitate.

"Yes," he said bluntly. "That is what replay is going to be there for. And replay is coming very soon. I can't give you a date, but it's going to be this year."

The umpires, who may have had some initial misgivings, seem to be all right with that, too.

"Here's the thing about replay," Scott continued. "There are a lot of factors in replay that I could go on and on about. There are a lot of ballparks that are not umpire-friendly when it comes to border calls. That's how they build them. They're fan-friendly and they don't want to change that.

"Do we like that? No. But you know what? We're losing that war, so we'll accept it and we'll move on and deal with however Major League Baseball wants us to deal with it. And that's about all I can say about it. But [Victorino's line drive] is a perfect example of why they want replay."

To be fair, some Phillies, including manager Charlie Manuel, still continued to insist that the ball nicked the pole, which would have made it a fair ball.

Scott, however, came away with the opposite conclusion after having had an opportunity to look at the play again.

"It was tough," he said. "I look at it now and it looks like it just went foul, just missed the pole. Foul ball. After talking to the guys, nobody was 100 percent sure one way or the other. We're not going to flip a call unless

we've got it 100 percent."

Later, Scott said, he talked to Marlins leftfielder Josh Willingham about it.

"It was funny," he said. "He goes, 'I don't know. I think you missed it, but I don't know.' And he was the closest guy to it."

At the general managers' meetings in Orlando last November, the GMs voted 25-5 in favor of having Major League Baseball investigate a limited use of instant replay, for use only in determining home runs.

Somewhat surprisingly, considering the historic conservatism of the sport, not to mention commissioner Bud Selig's stated opposition to the idea, the idea gained traction remarkably quickly. There is even a chance that it could be rolled out on a trial basis in some regular-season games this year and then utilized in the postseason.

Nobody wants games to be played by robots and officiated by electronic gizmos.

Everybody wants, or should want, to see as many calls as possible be made correctly.

In the end, that call didn't impact the outcome of the game. Those turned out to be the only runs the Phillies scored and the Marlins piled on against the Phillies bullpen to win going away, 8-2.

It could have mattered, though.

One argument against instant replay is that it will add to the time of games as baseball is trying to eliminate as much dead time as possible. And that's a fair point.

Except that Marlins third baseman Jorge Cantu signaled emphatically that he thought the ball was foul and Florida manager Fredi Gonzalez came out to argue and the umps huddled to compare notes. And ya gotta believe that in the time all that took, somebody could have looked at a replay and settled the issue once and for all.

Look, instant replay isn't perfect. There are justifiable concerns about the home team making pictures available that don't benefit them. Some replays are inconclusive. Even worse, there are plenty of times when one angle appears to support one conclusion and another appears to prove the opposite.

But when there's a chance to get it right, why not? As Phillies general manager Pat Gillick said, explaining why he voted in favor of the idea last fall: "From a technical standpoint, why wouldn't we want to get the play right? It seems like we were kind of behind the times and everybody knew what the call was except for the four guys [umpires] on the field."

And that, in short, is why instant replay is coming soon to a ballpark near you. *

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