The replay rule was enacted in part because of a bad call on what should have been an Alex Rodriguez homerun against the Orioles and tonight an Alex Rodriguez homerun became the first to be reviewed! I was watching the game on YES, which showed pretty clearly it was fair (Al Leiter and Ken Singleton even traced how the ball bounced that gave it the effect of looking maybe foul) though I heard ESPN was showing angles that were not as clear. There was apparently then an argument about whether or not it was a clutch homerun because that sort of thing is very important.

It only took a few minutes (2 minutes and 55 seconds or something deadly exact), which isn’t a big deal for the TV audience but it must have been very confusing at the game since Major League teams don’t show replays and such. Anyway, it won’t be happening a lot as it’s very limited in its current incarnation and maybe in the future it will be as amusing as managers and coaches suddenly running onto the field and shouting about things most of the stadium can’t figure out.

For the record I argue it was clutch because it gave an old man another night off, though I would definitely have preferred Mariano Rivera in that inning even with the 5 run lead over Jose Veras. Veras really needs to get traded in the offseason in some sort of package before he has no value left at all. Clutch hitting is probably the stupidest argument ever in baseball though, so it doesn’t actually matter.