Last night I sat in the stands at the Rays home opener against Seattle Mariners and boo'ed along with everyone else all the way through the 8th and 9th inning after a 3rd base umpire called Upton out at third base. It nullified a 1 - out triple, in a game where the Rays were down by only 1 run. The call was close but tv replays everywhere did showed that Upton was clearly safe and that the ump had a bad view or perspective. We all booed continously for so long because of extreme frustation and we all are just frankly sick and tired of getting the shaft on the bad umpire calls, especially after what happened up in New York in the Ray - Yankees game (2 extremely bad calls - a phantom tag on Upton and a HORRIBLE call of a force out on Pena when the ball was caught by the second baseman clearly after Pena slid in and was standing on the base). The Rays have played only 7 games, and already the Rays have suffered with 3 very bad calls at critical times. The percentage of bad calls is just too high. I won't get into homeplate calls for balls and strikes because I do understand that that is more subjective in the eyes of the plate umpire.
I know the Rays aren't the only team to always get the shaft but folks here can't help but wonder if close calls don't sometime go in favor of more dominant teams.
Something has got to be done. Why not give two challenges to managers each game for some things like calls at bases or whether a ball hit inside or outside a foul line or home run line (but not calling balls and strikes), just like football. Or just have an additional umpire watching from the tv booth and interject when there is clearly a wrong call. TV replay can't take any more time than the time spent waiting for the manager to go out and rant and rave at the umpire, only to be usually followed by an ejection. With tv replay, we won't have to wait for the rant and rave and ejection to continue.
This is the 21st century, and replay is now used in football and tennis, and to some limited extent in hockey and basketball (by the ref's). Why must baseball be so sacrosant? The playing field needs to be leveled out and umpires need to be more objective in their calls, and having something like limited tv replay will, I think, make some umps call plays more honestly, or if it was impossible for the ump to get a clear view of the play, enable the multi-view eagle eyes of tv cameras to assist.
