Mushnick's surface take on instant replay

By Rick Morris

The New York Post's Phil Mushnick is someone with whom I both frequently agree and disagree. He is always outspoken, but is generally someone whose opinion you can respect even when you think he's wrong because he isn't lazy about backing up a take like a Mike Lupica or Mitch Albom might frequently be.

But I can't at all agree with his reasoning about why instant replay in baseball would be bad. Now, I haven't joined the replay bandwagon yet, but my mind is open on the subject. However, to reject it because of misguided fear that ballclubs could play hanky-panky with the content for replays as Mushnick suggests is ill-conceived.

I don't doubt for a moment that there are many owners who would try to use their TV trucks as an extension of the managerial staff (*cough* STEINBRENNER *cough*). "Sorry Mr. Umpire, we don't have a replay of whether that ball was a home run or not." Unfortunately for Mushnick's theory though, the vast majority of games are televised by both teams. If you're going to use replay, deploy it in the overwhelming number of games where each team has a broadcast team at its disposal. Games that are nationally televised by neutral networks would be exempt from this rule.

That wasn't even a difficult problem to solve.

C'mon, Phil, you're better than this.