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SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS/AP) -- Jim Evans is a former Major League umpire with 28 years of experience under his belt. He believes that instant replay has its place in baseball. In fact, he says today's new "fan friendly" ball parks have contributed to the necessity of instant replay.
“A lot of fans can get real close that baseball’s technically still in play, and some spectator interference calls where fans reach over and touch the ball, it happens in like a millisecond, and it’s almost impossible for an umpire, who is a couple hundred feet away, to make the absolute certain call every time.”
While Evans is supportive of instant replay, he also cautions that it can be misused and warns of what he doesn’t want the new technology to become:
“…just for it to become a crutch, and for umpires to develop the mental attitude that ‘ok, no big deal, we’ve got an instant replay if we mess something up,’ … and that’s the wrong mindset for an umpire.”
The current plan is to use instant replay only to determine if a ball has cleared a fence, if it was foul or fair, or if a fan interfered with a play. Evans cautions that umpires will have to be very judicious in how they use this new tool for the game.
On Wednesday, Major League Baseball announced that umpires will be allowed to check video on home run calls starting Thursday after the MLB, guardian of America's most traditional sport, reversed its decades-long opposition to instant replay.
The replay central itself is an 18-by-24 foot room on the fifth floor of a former baking factory in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, containing hundreds of television and computer monitors. Video from the 30 major league ballparks are already being collected and will be made available to umpires starting Thursday to help them with home-run calls. Technicians can zoom in on replays and run them at any speed.
The NFL first used replay to aid officials in 1986, the NHL in 1991 and the NBA in 2002.
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KCBS' Susan Leigh Taylor reports
