Re: Are baseball umpires getting help from the booth?
tiger - not sure what conspiracy you think is going on here.
When an umpire call is going to be overturned it's obviously going to be something that is likely to show up on instant-replay as well.
In the ATL/DET game today a run was scored by ATL that I think pretty clearly should have been an out because the runner's leg was high and wasn't touching the plate when he slid in. This was Tim McCarver's analysis as well.
No conference. No overturn. The run counted. Play continued.
If there were such communications taking place to overturn iffy ump-calls (wearing an earpiece or something?) I think we would see way more overturned calls.
In the past, it seemed that there were far fewer situations of overturned calls. The ump who made the call was on his own to stubbornly defend a bad call and it was considered an embarassment if he even considered asking another umpire. That's how it seemed to be sometimes anyway.
Now there is a much greater focus on overturning each other and just getting the call right.
If you are an ump in a different location but KNOW that you saw something that the ruling-ump couldn't possibly have seen then you can step right in and talk about it without having to wait to be asked. It's not considered an insult. Lets just get this right.
Just don't go out of your way to show me up over and over again obviously.
This is how I perceive the situation to be.
Basketball officials would be wise to consider a similar approach imo.
As it stands now, it seems that when two players have contact the foul call is made by whoever blows their whistle first.
Sometimes a guy who is furthest from the play makes a bad call that there was a foul when there was actually no contact.
My opnion is that if a ref in a better position could clearly see that there was no contact, or that the foul should have been called on the other player, then for crying out loud just suck it up, have an overrule, and get the call right.
Don't just stand by the call just because 1 guy was faster to blow his whistle than somebody else.
That's my take on it anyway but I understand so little about basketball officiating I wouldn't be surprised if I was 100% wrong in my perception on how such things work.
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