...And justice for all: MLB's need for instant replay

One topic that'e being hammered on since the A.J. Pierzynski incident in Game 2 of the ALCS in Chicago is the possibility of developing and introducing football-style instant replay into Major League Baseball. While the number of arguments why this would be bad are legion, the single pro is undisputable: enabling officials to consult footage and an impartial review team would make for better results.

My suggestion would be for MLB to develop a "challenge rule" not unlike that used in the NFL. Setting a limit on the number of times a manager may challenge an official's call during a game, so as not to excessively elongate the experience, and penalizing a manager's team (i.e., advancing a runner one base, imposing a strike on a batter, imposing an out on a team) for calls they challenge and lose seems only fair and, like football's proven, serves to self-regulate the practice.

But of course, baseball being the big complainfest that it is, people would subdivide history into the "B.I." and "A.I." eras - Before and After Instant Replay. Sportswriters would start creating questionable subfactions of stats pertinent to "the play that should have been" and debate the merits of current and future stats and records based on era. However, do recall that certain rules have made the game better. When Babe Ruth played, a ball bouncing out of the field of play was still considered a homerun, and a significant number of the Bambino's dingers can be credited to this oversight. Now, it's the infamous ground-rule double. And it's been received well.

But in the end, we'd get more accurate results. It's a proven system in football, even if it is the second time around.