Some people get accused of being conspiracy theorists. I tend to get accused of erring too far in the other direction and not giving enough credence to conspiracy theories. Because sometimes they are true, after all. My defense: I’m an Occam’s Razor kind of guy and the simpler the explanation is usually the better explanation in my experience.
However, over at The Platoon Advantage, The Common Man has a conspiracy theory that I’m not inclined to dismiss as quickly as I usually dismiss such things. He notes that there weren’t as many replays of close plays in last night’s Rangers-Rays game as you might expect, and then comes out and says why this might be:
To The Common Man, it suggests that perhaps TBS was asked not to make a big deal out of potentially missed calls. This would seem to jive with an earlier play in the San Francisco-Atlanta series, where Buster Posey was clearly out at 2B, but announcers refused to acknowledge it, in spite of the video evidence to the contrary (and Posey saying after the game “it’s a good thing we don’t have instant replay).
If this is the case, it seems likely that the commissioner’s office has made conscious decision not just to ignore the loud cries for expanded instant replay, but to tacitly suppress them by denying these voices additional evidence with which to make their case.
I’m not saying that TCM is right about this because, like I said, Occam’s Razor is a powerful weapon. It may just be the case that the production crew was thinking about other things or the pitchers were working too quickly -- Cliff Lee was at any rate -- to shoehorn in as many replays as you usually see.
But it is . . . curious, is it not?
