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Baseball needs to add replays and doubleheaders

IT WAS 71 degrees, sunny and nearly windless in Paradise Valley, Ariz., yesterday afternoon while major league baseball's owners droned through the second and final day of their quarterly meeting.

The debate over the use of replay in baseball has increased over the past few years. (Steven M. Falk/Staff file photo)
The debate over the use of replay in baseball has increased over the past few years. (Steven M. Falk/Staff file photo)Read more

IT WAS 71 degrees, sunny and nearly windless in Paradise Valley, Ariz., yesterday afternoon while major league baseball's owners droned through the second and final day of their quarterly meeting.

Their general managers were included for the first time. With the current Basic Agreement expiring in 11 months, the only hot-button issues facing a sport enjoying unprecedented prosperity during a deep recession were quickly shelved.

OK, Tampa Bay and Miami are still baseball's Balkans.

A month ago, it appeared a plan to expand the playoffs to include a wild-card semifinal round (insert groans here) had a chance to at least be proposed and discussed.

But that wasn't going to happen in the 2011 postseason even if it had been quickly approved. Regular-season schedules are in place, promotion dates are planned.

Under the three division-winner-plus-one wild-card format that has been "wildly" successful, each team must navigate the perilous waters of a best-of-five playoff.

If a second wild-card tier flies down the road, how do you do it? One-game knockout? Best-of-three? Followed by best-of-five?

Whatever, any changes to the game's format must be negotiated with the players' union. So, commissioner Bud Selig, whose greatest strength in such matters is proceeding with caution, was wise to keep the unhatched egg in the incubator. It will surely be an important part of what is expected to be a tough but workable renewal process when owners and players go checkbook to checkbook to carve the pastime's next agreement on how to share the wealth.

Some think fixing the Russian roulette of the playoff's first round is more important than expanding it. The Phillies were unceremoniously swept by the Rockies as the East Division winner in 2007, but have gone 9-2 in first-round play against the Brewers, Rockies and Reds since then.

Expanding the round to a best-of-seven would not require schedule surgery. They used to have something in baseball called the one-admission doubleheader. Two for the price of one. Before MLB expanded west of St. Louis, they were scheduled for Sundays. Mondays were travel days. By train.

The scheduled doubleheader is extinct as the great auk and dodo birds. Ah, but the separate admission day-night DH is here to stay, children of meteorological necessity, rainouts with no schedule wiggle room for makeups. No need to start the season earlier to make room for possibly two extra first-round games. Merely draw up a schedule where each team plays two day-night, separate-admission doubleheaders.

As hot a ticket as the Phillies have become, they could play games at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. and still sell out all three. Particularly if the day's pitchers were named Halladay, Lee and Oswalt.

As for adding two more wild cards . . . Let's hope MLB never has a version of the NFL's Seattle Seasnipes staggering into the postseason.

The other hot-button issue kept in committee would expand use of replay beyond home runs and boundary calls.

Armando Gallaraga and Jim Joyce will walk together forever, a pitcher and an umpire connected by a hyphen and a blown call. A perfect game vanished in the blink of a usually competent umpire's historic gaffe on the 27th out.

Replay is a must-have for NFL football. The game has become so fast, the power and speed of the athletes is so amazing, the mostly middle-aged zebras making the calls while under friendly fire are simply unable to cope with everything that happens on an average play. And despite the amazing and always improving technology, calls sometimes are simply impossible to overturn despite hi-def, super slo-mo and every conceivable angle.

Baseball does not present the same degree of difficulty. Fair or foul? Safe or out? Above or below the home-run line? Fan interfere with player catching ball? Strike or ball?

Well, forget replay of the ancient conundrum? Plate umpires are like snowflakes - no two strike zones are exactly alike. Ask Jamie Moyer or Tom Glavine, two lefthanders who pitched to areas just off the plate and depended on an umpire giving them those precious inches.

One thing the lords of baseball should consider when replay comes up in the labor negotiations, is what could be called the Gallaraga-Joyce Challenge.

Each manager would be able to challenge one call per game of his choosing. It could be a close play at a base in an early inning. Or a catch or trap call in the bottom of the ninth with the winning run on base.

There would be a fifth umpire in a replay booth in each ballpark - retired umpires will do fine, and don't tell me clubs can't afford it - to uphold or overrule the original call.

When to use the one call on any decision not involving balls and strikes would inject the same element of strategy into a game that replay challenges have added to the NFL.

One difference: No penalty if the umpire's call is allowed to stand. And what would you penalize in baseball anyway? Limit a manager to one mound visit the rest of the game? Ban bubblegum?

There should be no reward - or penalty - for getting a call right. *

Send e-mail to bill1chair@aol.com.

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