Aug 27th 2008 3:30AM by Matt Watson (author feed)
Major League Baseball has made the official announcement: instant replay is coming to baseball. As in, soon. As in “by the end of the week.” Come Thursday, umpires will now have the ability to double-check close calls when the field’s boundaries are in question (ie, whether or not a ball fair or foul, whether it cleared the outfield wall or stayed in play, etc.)

It’s a bold move by MLB to install such a radical new system in the middle of a pennant race, but I completely understand the rationale: if the technology exists to guarantee a correct call, why wait? Things have been moving so quickly, though, that not every manager has been kept in the loop to know how it’s all going to work. From Paul Sullivan of the :

“Do you throw out a red handkerchief or something?” Piniella said, laughing. “What’s the format? What do you do? I’d love to be able to throw a red hanky or a green hanky on the field. Can you imagine being able to throw something on the field and you can’t be ejected? Nobody has told us anything. I think we should be schooled on it somehow.”
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