Monday Funnies: the agony of watching the 5-minute replay.
Five minutes.
Surely that's not the average amount of time it takes to review a call that's been challenged by a manager, but it sure seems like it.
Maybe about 3 weeks ago Cubs were playing the Cards.
Matt Carpenter hits one to center, and Arismendy Alcantara makes an awesome toss to nail him at 2nd base.
Remember?
Alcantara’s throw beats Carpenter by 10 feet, but Carpenter has a goofy head-first slide and bounces a little, then argues that Emilio Bonifacio missed the tag.
The next 5 minutes?
We’re mostly looking at two umps with their headphones on doing nothing.
5 freaking minutes.
They had it uploaded straight on the MLB video highlights.
I can't find it any more, but they left that entire part on the clip - the announcers (wasn’t Len and Jim) babbling on about nothing while umps looked at each other.
I timed it.
From the time Carpenter holds up his hand to say he wasn’t tagged until the time the ump sticks up his thumb is about 5 minutes.
You know what my wife did that day?
Bought groceries.
Sees a sign that says something like “Free cheese with the purchase of this bacon”.
So she gets the bacon, but of course the cheese isn’t conveniently there so she has to walk over to the cheese area, and duh - they’re out of the free cheese.
These people never learn - you can't do that to my wife or she will hunt you down.
Which she did.
Guy in uniform says, “Um...okay, pick another cheese.”
When she told me the story, I asked her how much time that little episode took out of her life?
“5 minutes.”
I go, "Really? I spent five minutes watching a couple umps stand around waiting for somebody in New York to look at a replay so they can tell the umps that when they called a guy out, they were right. And I didn't get any freaking cheese.”
She still doesn’t know what that was about.
But I’m here to tell you that MLB has created a giant turd that needs polishing..
If they’re going to waste even more time in the middle of a baseball game, even if the call is super-important, then please - figure out something to entertain us with.
Start by showing Homer Number Two from The Ryno Game (go to about 34 minutes in... this game was being called by Bob Costas on tv but this vid lines up Harry's radio broadcast).
Or how about a little Marla Collins?
Or maybe some video of my son in T-Ball when he was 5.
Next season they'll figure out the replay is the perfect spot to make money.
Next season we'll be hearing... "This second look is brought to you by Buick, who invite you to take a second look at the new Yada Yada."
And we'll be seeing a still shot of a Yada Yada on top of a couple umps waiting for somebody in NY to...
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