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Upon further review, replay is becoming annoying

By Alan Greenwood - Staff Writer | Jun 26, 2019

Alan Greenwood

Warning: A back-in-the-day argument is bubbling to the surface.

Anyone who is not inclined to endure an old grouch climbing onto his soap box should move along.

The objection in question is the increasing use of video replay to determine if an official is right or wrong with the call he or she makes on the field, court or ice. It isn’t that officials are infallible, or that games should be steered by horrible calls when the technology exists to correct them.

It’s that the slippery slope seems to be rapidly approaching. It is the pursuit of perfection in a sport that features players who are considered stars for succeeding once in three tries.

No one incident has prompted this grumbling. And for some reason – maybe because baseball is the pastime of choice here – it doesn’t seem nearly as annoying in football, basketball or hockey.

Big league baseball has enough interruptions in the game’s flow, mostly self-inflicted wounds that make casual fans start channel surfing. More five-minute replay reviews, particularly those that are used to check on bang-bang plays at first in the third inning of scoreless games, will not help.

The slippery slope referenced above would bottom out in the worst ditch imaginable – using digital means to call balls and strikes. It could be done today; the digital equipment exists and has been used in the big leagues for years to review umpires’ strike zones.

Batters and managers could kick dirt on the machinery, or take a bat to it, sort of like the assault on the printer in Office Space.

Wouldn’t that make for great baseball theater.

TIME TRAVEL: June 27, 1984 – “Laurie Dion of Nashua was eliminated in the opening round of match play at the Women’s Western Amateur Golf Tournament at New Haven Country Club Tuesday. Dion dropped a 6-and-5 decision but three other New Hampshire golfers advanced.

“Tina Tombs of Manchester was the only Granite Stater alive in the championship flight.

“Dana Hunter of Abenaqui won her first-flight match while Sue Johnson of Hanover, the defending state amateur champ, won her second-flight opener.”

AND FINALLY: Chris Simms must have been bored, or in desperate need of attention, or stranded atop Mount Moron, when he gave his ranking of NFL quarterbacks the other day. For those who haven’t heard the guffaws, Simms says Tom Brady is the ninth best QB in the league.

Simms, whose pro career produced a 69.1 QB rating, zero championships and no moments, was critiqued quite well by Kurt Warner:

“You don’t have to have him No. 1. No problem. I can see some arguments with why you would move him down, but to have him nine or 10 on the list, it’s to be just crazy.”

Or stupid. Or both.

Contact Alan Greenwood at 594-1248 or agreenwood@nashuatelegraph.com.

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