Technology grounds airplanes. It also bogs down sports

Time to turn off the videos, at least most of them, and put the reviews in their place

Airports throughout the country still have stacks of unclaimed bags at the Delta carousel. Passengers belong to those bags. Lord knows where they are.

It’s been that way since Friday, when a vicious computer glitch delivered a blow to banking and commercial aviation. Almost every major airline was affected. But Southwest was not. That’s because Southwest still uses Windows 3.1, which is 32 years old, and was untouched by the Crowdstrike malfunction. How you can be too old at 81 to run for President, and also too old at 32 to be serving Delta, American and United, is a mystery. But it is also a reminder that technology sometimes gets over its skis, which would be fine if it didn’t also lose those skis, along with assorted golf clubs and surfboards.

Sports hasn’t been enslaved by Big Tech, not yet, but vigilance remains necessary. The whole Houston Astros scandal of the 2017 baseball season was a function of video technology. Sports betting, which was once confined to Las Vegas and to Bobby the Bookmaker sitting in the back of a ‘74 Rambler, is now just a touch away, which means fans can bet against a golfer and then yell at the top of his backswing. NBA coaches and players now hear the same catcalls, and threats, that jockeys have endured for decades.

That’s part of the nostalgia for Willie Mays and his colleagues. Mays, in particular, did things that today’s players can’t imagine, and, as far as we know, never sat in the video room to learn every subtlety of every pitcher. He was never paralyzed by anything, particularly analysis.

In the early 2000s, the Angels called up a hitter from Salt Lake. His first major league at-bat was a popup. Immediately he left the dugout to check out the tape in the clubhouse, or at least tried to. Jarrod Washburn, the lefthanded pitcher, called him out. “You made it up here without watching video,” he said. “Why do you want to do it now?” Unfortunately, Salt Lake has video now and so do all the affiliates.

Obviously, video is here to stay and it should be, in some form. A young coach’s journey to the corner office often begins in the video room. It’s a teaching tool. That’s fine. What it shouldn’t be is an active participant in the games as they are being played.

Watch any NHL game. When goals are scored that might prompt questions about goaltender interference or a high stick, all the coaches are staring at their feet. Are they downcast? Not in most cases, although we can’t speak for John Tortorella. No, they are watching the I-pads and video screens that are recessed underneath the bench.

Then, and only then, will they call for an official review, usually on the advice of their video coaches. It would make the game more challenging, and certainly quicker, if they have to request that review spontaneously, based on the same audiovisual skills by which the officials are bound.

The same goes for the other sports, particularly baseball, where the manager will climb to the top step, hold up his hand as a request for time, and then ask for a replay or not. That was not the purpose of the review when it was instituted. It was designed to sort out bang-bang calls on the bases, or diving attempts by outfielders to catch bloops. Instead, managers and particularly NBA coaches feel compelled to ask for replays in order to appease their own players.

The umpire has to make the call with his own two eyes. Normally, he doesn’t get to ask for a replay. But officials in other sports will make a call — goaltending in basketball, for instance — just to set up the structure for a second look. They want to get bailed out, too. In that way the review has gone way past its role as a remedy. It is now part of the game. Yogi Berra would love it. It’s never over until it’s over and, sometimes, not even then.

In 1985 Whitey Herzog wouldn’t have needed to check with the guys upstairs to ask Don Denkinger for a review. Herzog’s Cardinals lost Game 6, and a chance to win the World Series, when first base umpire Denkinger ruled that Jorge Orta had beaten a throw to first. Orta’s Royals scored twice in that ninth inning and won the game, 2-1, and then won the Series the next night. Orta was out by half the length of a shoe. It was the type of naked mistake that video review was invented to correct.

(Parenthetically, the Cardinals still could have won the game and prevented Denkinger from becoming a punchline. Jack Clark dropped a popup, Darrell Porter contributed a passed ball, and Dane Iorg got the winning 2-run single.)

In 2010 the same fate visited umpire Jim Joyce, also at first base. Detroit’s Armando Galarraga got the first 26 outs against Cleveland. The next batter, Jason Donald, hit a dribbler to first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who lobbed the ball to Galarraga, who caught it and put a foot on the bag before Donald’s foot even shadowed it. Joyce called Donald safe and the perfect game went poof. Again, a review would have overturned the ruling, given Galarraga his milestone, and kept Joyce off every blooper tape until the end of time.

Both Denkinger and Joyce would have been removed from a lifelong hook by a replay. That would have fulfilled the sacred goal of “getting it right.” But when we’re talking about a play that doesn’t actually decide the game at the end, and we need nine camera angles to make a stab at guessing that it’s right, that’s a perversion of technology and a waste of our time on earth. The officiating crew is not an appellate court, and it got to the majors without a third eye glaring down.

But the most distasteful invasion of the game is the live interview. Regular season games, particularly those on Apple TV, feature a chat between the broadcasters and a player in the field. Enrique Hernandez of the Dodgers botched a ground ball while conversing with the booth. Houston shortstop Jeremy Pena was in the midst of a Q-and-A when he dropped a popup. “Bad communication,” he explained, as third baseman Alex Bregman, the player with whom Pena should have communicated, stood there stone-faced.

The reason nobody seems all that troubled by this ridiculous intrusion is that the players are getting paid for it. That’s more important than maybe putting a runner on base who will lead a six-run rally. The pitchers probably aren’t thrilled with it, but maybe they’ll have their own deals someday. You won’t be surprised to know that no hidden truths about the game are revealed during such interviews, but that’s not the point. The point is that the networks have these miniature mics, and therefore are going to use them. The larger point is that 12 teams make the playoffs these days, and the regular season is just glorified calisthenics.

Better to let the players play and the broadcasters broadcast and the referees referee, and then we can put the cameras where they belong, for the moments when a tearful businessman and his abandoned garment bag find each other at last.