The NLDS Check-Swing Heard ‘Round The World

I write this with one major plea. Please do not make check swings reviewable!

If you had tuned in Thursday night to the Los Angeles Dodgers- San Francisco Giants NLDS Game 5, you got the classic you hoped for !

Baseball fans were in elation that this legendary series dating back to the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants was alive and well in 2021 on the West Coast! Interestingly enough, the ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ that propelled the NY Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers was 70 years ago this month!

That is why I say the check-swing that ended the 107-win SG Giants season is the check-swing heard around the world! It had that magnitude as Wilmer Flores CLEARLY held up yet first base umpire Gabe Morales called him out . Morales later explained , “Check swings are one of the hardest calls we have. I don’t have the benefit of multiple camera angles when I’m watching it live. When it happened live, I thought he went, so that’s why I called it a swing.”

As bad as the call was to end the NLDS classic, the call was what we have fell in love with in baseball, the pure human nature of the game. Of the call of the umpire, and the nature of the game. That’s why to call for check swings to become reviewable will continue to shred the purity and the human error this game was built on! For goodness sake, E is for ‘error’ on the scoreboard! Why can’t umpire calls be left sacred? Why must this game become more robotic via video review? It will become too robotic for the average fan and the purist!

As this league looks to make the game faster, a reminder there is no clock and all the reviews in the world simply add two minutes to an already 3-plus hour game! It would be insanity to add check swing to the growing list of video reviews !