Editorial: When sport isn’t just a game

Friday, Oct. 14, 2005 | 7:41 a.m.

The White Sox beat the Angels in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series on Wednesday, a win made possible by a disputed call by the home plate umpire. So get ready for a push by fans to have Major League Baseball adopt a replay system.

The National Football League and college football use a replay system that allows game officials to watch disputed plays a second time on slow-motion videotape. In order to reverse a call, a replay has to show conclusively that the referee was wrong.

Some fans love replay -- especially on those occasions when a ruling goes in their team's favor -- while many purists hate it, saying it slows down the game. The delays caused by the replays can actually change the game's momentum, another reason why critics of replays say we should rely on the judgment of the referees on the field.

What is amazing is how many of the reviewed calls confirm that referees, having to make these calls in a split-second, got it right the first time. That's no easy task, involving as it does some of the world's fastest athletes in slam-bang plays.

The advent of instant replay says a lot about how seriously we treat professional and college sports today. It has gotten to the point that we require perfection of umpires and referees when such attainment is impossible. Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the fact that a game is just a game.