Sports

MLB in hurry to create more review delays

One day, MLB umpires are going to leave the field, ostensibly to review tape of a play — then keep on going, never to return.

Now that MLB has a sensible (and sensibly infrequent) use of TV replay — to determine if balls hit over fences and against walls were home runs — baseball wants more replay. It even knows when. It just doesn’t know why, what, where, how.

“We’re going to increase replay, next year,” MLB VP Joe Torre said Tuesday. “We just don’t know how we’re going to go about it yet.”

Gee, if MLB doesn’t hurry, millions of fans never will watch baseball again! That the game had survived so long without any replay rules is miraculous, so now let’s throw in as many as we can!

Despite the media’s focus on perceived blown calls, there is no populist revolution to add more replay rules — and replay stoppages — to big league baseball games. For the most part, Tuesday’s tempest is forgotten by Friday. Play ball.

Beyond that, the practicality of the matter — lost in a cloudy stew of knee-jerking and reflexive reflux — rarely is addressed. The only things even marginally reasonable left for MLB to do is to stop its games to check replays as to:

1) Whether batted balls down either line that did not leave the field of play before landing in the field of play — balls originally ruled fair — were, in fact, foul.

2) Whether a batter was/wasn’t hit by a pitch.

3) Whether the force play call at first base — and only with none on — was correct.

4) Whether the runner who was first ruled safe at a base or the plate was out — creating, at that moment, the third out and end of the half-inning.

That’s it. I think. And that’s more than plenty, as in lots of stoppages for reviews in every game. Everything and anything else would pry open a large drum of variables that simply can’t be determined.

You can’t predict what would have happened anywhere on the bases or on the field had the ball initially been ruled fair or the runner not initially been ruled out. Again, the post-call or reversed-call variables are too great. You can’t presume that anything would have otherwise happened.

MLB seems impractically primed to substitute perceived bad calls with guesswork — guesses made during frequent stoppages that would extend games that already are played too slowly.

Remember, many of the media experts who want more replay are the same deep thinkers who knowingly tell you that the batter would’ve hit a two-run homer had the man on first, moments earlier, not been thrown out stealing.

Most importantly, for all the greed and day-after debates, it still is a game. And for those who can’t remember or reconcile that — including those with the authority to change the game — well, they’re missing a good game.

No baloney! Maloney, Albert show it’s OK to wait before judging

Given that Dave Maloney, when he played for the Rangers, clung to an illogical mistrust of the media, he seemed a dubious choice to be the team’s radio color analyst. But teamed with Kenny Albert, Maloney keeps getting better. A single episode late in Tuesday’s Flyers-Rangers provided evidence:

The Flyers’ Scott Hartnell, after a glancing check on Rick Nash, got into a hassle with someone on the Rangers’ bench. Neither Albert nor Maloney tried to spin it as a good (Rangers) vs. bad (Flyers) thing. Both judiciously said that they would await a replay before issuing judgment.

Hartnell, hit with a 10-minute misconduct, was done for the night and was leaving the ice when, said Maloney, he saluted the hostile Garden crowd “with a Papal wave.” Maloney added, “Ah, old-time hockey.” Fabulous. Ya could see it, feel it.

Through the replay, Albert and Maloney then suggested Stu Bickel, from the Rangers’ bench, may have started it with Hartnell. Ah, fair and balanced.

Then as Bickel also was hit with a 10-minute major, Albert and Maloney didn’t miss the oddity that Bickel would finish the night with 10 more minutes in third-period penalties than he had in minutes played in the third period.

* World Gone Nuts, Continued: Jose Canseco, who last year filed for bankruptcy, currently stars in a TV ad for a product called HT — short for High Testosterone. In the ad, the former MLB anabolic slugger displays his flexed arm to the camera while reminding men they can’t have enough testosterone.

The ad seems aimed at young fools who could think this product contains human growth hormone — muscle-builders that are either illegal or should be.

And so, in a world gone nuts, it came as no surprise that Canseco was in Albany last week, where he urged legislators to get tough on dangerous muscle supplements.

“A lot of young kids,” Canseco testified, “will take any risk to get where their idols are.” Ya don’t say?

Speaking of state legislators and the world gone nuts, though N.J. legislators and Gov. Christie remain eager to legalize sports gambling, they still won’t allow bets on games played by N.J. colleges. In other words, these lawmakers understand the importance of protecting local schools from the laws they propose!

U. guys are old school

We usually don’t find anything to admire about U. of Miami athletics, but with the NCAA Tournament near, it is worth noting the school apparently isn’t lying about the ages of its basketball players: As college students go, they’re old.

Among The U’s regulars are three born in the 1980s, including a senior who turns 25 in May. There’s also a 21-year-old sophomore and a junior who will be 23 in October. This “veteran” team must be attending on the G.I. Bill.

* The little things often say plenty. At least twice this year, ESPN’s Top 10 Plays have included slam-dunks whistled for offensive fouls. Yep, at ESPN, committing a foul and a turnover on the same play can win one the Play of the Day!

* The first time the Yankees will lose a game on YES’s “Yankee Classics” will be on the day Mike Francesa declares them a lock.

* Every time I hear newscasts talk about Dennis Rodman meeting with a powerful, repressive dictator, who inherited his muscle from his father, owns and controls media, disallows free speech and dissent, and now threatens the free world south of the 38th parallel, I figure they’re talking about Jimmy Dolan!