It happened again, and it seems to be happening more frequently than ever before – umpires blowing calls; and I don’t mean missed balls and strikes… I mean game changing calls, and it happened yet again on Sunday afternoon and it happened yet again to the Dodgers – and yes, it was a game changer. Fortunately, the Dodgers ended up winning the game in spite of the blown call with an exciting walk-off hit by Dee Gordon in the bottom of the 10th inning, but quite frankly, there never should have even been a 10th inning.

With one out and runners at the corners, Elian Herrera hit a fly ball to short right field. The moment the ball was hit everyone in the stadium knew that it was going to be a close play at the plate. As soon as White Sox right fielder Alex Rios made the catch, Dodgers catcher Matt Treanor tagged up at third and scored the then tying run, but the run was nullified when the White Sox appealed that Treanor had left too soon, something that replays clearly showed never happened. The results were in – third base umpire Jerry Meals had blown the call.

With the ball in the glove of White Sox right fielder Alex Rios, it is obvious that Matt Treanor’s left foot was still on the bag, thus negating the claim that he left too soon. Treanor scored what would have been the game-tying run but he was ruled out on appeal by the White Sox. Blown calls such as this seem to be happening almost daily in the MLB and further support the argument that expanded video replay is needed.

Umpire Tim Welke makes what is arguably the worst blown call in baseball history (well, except for the Jim Joyce perfect game blown call, of course) when he called Jerry Hairston Jr. out on this play. Todd Helton’s foot was a yard off of the bag. Why not park your ego and ask for help on a play like this?

An equally bad but blatantly worse call happened last month in Colorado when Jerry Hairston Jr. was called out on a ground ball when Rockies first baseman Todd Helton’s left foot was a yard off of the bag. This was nuts! Even Helton came away laughing. To make matters worse with this blown call is that first base umpire Tim Welke immediately realized that he had blown the call but his ego would not allow him change it. Why is this? Where does it say anywhere in the rules that if an umpire knowingly makes the wrong call that he cannot change it to the right call? For heaven’s sake, everybody in the world knows that umpires are human and that even they occasionally make mistakes. So-called baseball purists go into a flaming rant about keeping the human element in the game but is it not human to make mistakes? Is it not human to acknowledge your mistakes? Is is not human to correct mistakes when given the opportunity to do so? Is it not human to forgive mistakes? Where is the argument here? Making mistakes and correcting them is as human as it gets.

Sure, White Sox manager Robin Ventura would have gone ballistic if yesterday’s blown call had been reversed… but who cares? They would have gotten the call right; and when the stakes are as high as they are in the MLB today, with salaries in the hundreds of millions of dollars and with potential World Series titles at stake, there is simply no excuse for not getting it right.

As expected, broadcasters Rick Monday, Charlie Steiner, and DodgerTalk host Kevin Kennedy had a lot to say about Meals’ blown call. To the man, they each agreed on the need for expanded use of video replay in Major League Baseball. Monday and Kennedy even offered a suggestion on how to do so in a manner that wouldn’t add any dreaded time to the game (certainly no longer that Don Mattingly’s two-minute argument on the field which led to his fourth ejection of the season). Their suggestion is to use a challenge system similar to the one used in the NFL but limit it to only one challenge per game. Granted, there would have to be an additional umpire or some other reply official “in the booth” to review the challenged play, but the time involved in reviewing the play would be minimal – probably less than 30 seconds – especially on the blatantly blown calls.

Major League Baseball is the only professional sport out there today that does not use video replay. This is insanity – the technology is there and it is readily available at every MLB ballpark.

What is even more painful than having to deal with these frequent blown calls is that we are going to have to deal with them for quite some time… at least until the 2014 season because Bud Selig has already come out and publicly said that increased use of video replay is on hold at least until next season and he most certainly wouldn’t make a change as significant as this mid season; and Lord knows that it would most likely take a year (or more) to get the MLB players union to agree to it, in spite of the fact that it is they who suffer most by these blown calls; but the sooner the process begins, the sooner it will become reality.

The bottom line is that the technology is already in place for the expanded use of  video reply and delaying its implementation will only lead to more blown calls and further embarrassment of these humans that we call umpires.