The Final 9

By BRUCE WEBER

Getting it right is a necessity in genetic testing, a plus in a spelling bee and a paramount virtue in journalism. But in sports it might just be overrated.

This week, Major League Baseball introduced instant replay as a tool to adjudicate troublesome home run calls, making it the last of the major American sports to use technology to help officials get it right.

Tennis has the electric eye to monitor selected line calls. Basketball lets the referees check the videotape to see if a player released a shot before the buzzer at the end of a period and also to review fights and flagrant fouls. In hockey, they’ll look again to see if the puck did or didn’t sneak entirely across the goal line. And in football it seems they’ll review just about anything.

The chief argument in favor of instant replay is that it preserves the integrity of the game, that athletes work too hard and are too good at what they do to have their skills and the nature of their competition marginalized by the human frailties of ostensibly lesser mortals who sit in judgment of them. Of course, the games existed perfectly well with their integrity perfectly intact before anyone ever uttered the phrase, “Let’s go to the videotape.” And if it was integrity that the replay was preserving, we wouldn’t limit its use, would we?

Instant Replay May Be Moving Into Foul Territory....