clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

The Giants are silly for not showing replays on the scoreboard

There is a revolution, friend. Come, join us.

By Grant Brisbee

Alex Pavlovic has a cause. It is a noble cause.

With the new instant replay rules came another glorious change: Ballparks can now show replays of close plays on the scoreboard. They weren't allowed to before. The reason was that fans would riot and drunkenly pelt umpires with beer bottles and tomatoes and human babies, and there would be chaos in the streets. Except as anyone who's ever been to a basketball game knows, that doesn't happen. Fans boo. If the call is really bad, fans continue to boo.

However, the Giants aren't using this freedom as well as they could. They show replays on the board only if it's clear the Giants will benefit from the review. So during the lengthy review, not only is there no Replay Porcupine, but there's nothing on the scoreboard for the fans to analyze.

Benefits of this approach:


Problems with this approach:

  • C'mon, just let us see the stupid play

The odd thing is that the net result is fans angrier at the umpires, which was the fear of the original policy in the first place. With no replays for the calls that go against the Giants, the fans who haven't picked up on this pattern assume that the umpires are hosing the home team.

Other ballparks don't do this. They let the fans judge the play. You can hear the groans or cheers on the telecast when it becomes obvious which way the play is going to go. The Giants are ... I have no idea. It's like they're a Ministry of Unimportant Truth from the outtakes of 1984, valiantly fighting to make sure people don't know about the existence of pill bugs.

Why? Because.

Will it make a difference? No.

Will the truth harm anything at all? No.

Well, why not acknowledge the truth? Because.

Won't some of them eventually see the pill bugs and realize that you're obscuring the truth? Yes.

So, wait, what? Exactly.

This is important stuff, even in the important world of sports, which is crammed with important things we should care about at all times. We stand behind Alex Pavlovic and his brave stance. Hopefully, he'll get to keep his job. The press should truly be free. And so should the stupid replays.

More From McCovey Chronicles