The right call: More replays

PHILADELPHIA

I never thought that I'd be in favor of expanding instant replay for baseball, especially in the sport's most important games in the postseason. But then I never thought umpiring could get this bad.

It's time for baseball to seriously consider, and I would strongly suggest that it adopt, the use of instant replay for every postseason game.

No, not on balls and strikes. But there should be an extra umpire in a TV booth who communicates with the chief ump on the field. And that extra ump should have the authority, if he deems it necessary, to review any close or controversial play.

As a perfect illustration, in Game 3 of the World Series here on Saturday night, Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees hit a ball that was originally ruled a double off the top of the right field wall. For now, the only baseball plays that can have instant replay are just such "boundary calls." The umps assembled, left the field, consulted replay and got the call correct -- a two-run homer. But it took a few minutes. With a special-replay ump, the whole process might not have taken even one minute.

Under a newly expanded system, could such an extra umpire be wrong, too? Of course. Could he get power crazy and review too many plays and slow down the game? Yes, maybe. Could he be shy of insulting his fellow umps and review too few plays or fall back on "too close to change the call"? Okay, that's possible, too.

But could such an extra umpire be any worse than the current farce that has afflicted baseball this fall? Absolutely not.

And if, by some thousand-to-one misfortune, expanded replay proves to be a failure next season, then it can be abolished quickly. The only harm would be lost time -- games that are a few minutes slower. That's a gruesome thought. But it's worth a minor gamble.

However, what if it worked, as I believe it would? Baseball would suddenly find itself the purest of all our major games. In this entire postseason, with all its incorrect calls, has there been one single play about which -- after a minute of replays -- there was any doubt about the correct call? Chase Utley was safe at first base -- by only two or three inches, but clearly safe. Johnny Damon's line drive was trapped. Jimmy Rollins caught that bloop and turned a double play.

Those are just World Series calls. Think back over the last four weeks. Does any play still remain in doubt? I can't remember one. And, just as important, how long did it take for millions of viewers, partisans in bars and TV announcers to know what the correct call should be? Often, they knew within 20 seconds and almost always within a minute. Has even one controversial play this October required the five, six or seven minutes that NFL replays frequently take? No, I don't think so.

Baseball fears that it will adopt replay and inherit the problems of the NFL. Far more likely, it would discover that replay is much better suited to baseball -- both in accuracy and speed -- than any other sport. As for replays on boundary calls (on home runs, for example), baseball already has those. They're slow. But they're important and necessary. They're already here, presumably to stay.