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History: Instant Replay Employed

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By MARC LANCASTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 4, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - The Rays and Yankees made a bit of history Wednesday night as instant replay was employed for the first time in a major-league game.

A towering Alex Rodriguez home run off Troy Percival that sailed over the left-field foul pole with two outs in the top of the ninth inning was the fodder for the debut of a system put into place last week. As soon as third-base umpire Brian Runge called the ball fair, Rays catcher Dioner Navarro jumped in the air in protest.

Rays manager Joe Maddon came out of the dugout and conversed individually with home plate umpire Greg Gibson, Runge and crew chief Charlie Reliford, who was working second base, and convinced the umpires the play should be reviewed.

"We all believed it was a home run, but since the technology is in place we made the decision to use the technology and go look at the replays," Reliford told a pool reporter.

With Gibson staying behind on the field, the rest of the umpires entered the replay room set up off the visitors' dugout at Tropicana Field and emerged 2 minutes, 15 seconds later to uphold the original ruling.

"The replays we reviewed were conclusive that the call we made was correct," Reliford said.

No one seemed to have any objections to the process, with Reliford saying it went "exactly like they trained us it would go."

"It was pretty time-efficient, I'll say that," Rodriguez said. "What was it, two minutes? I was thinking it would take five or something."

And even though Maddon said he had heard mixed opinions on whether the ball looked fair or foul on replay, he did not dispute the final call. Nor did Percival, who said he thought it was fair all the way.

"Obviously, they got the call right," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "That's the important thing."

MLB instituted replay last week, allowing for review at the crew chief's discretion of three aspects of home run calls - fair or foul, whether they cleared the fence or not, and whether a fan interfered with the play.

"Whether it was fair or foul," Maddon said, "the process worked in the sense that I'm sure everything worked underneath, they saw what they were supposed to see, they came out in a reasonable amount of time, the pitcher would not have been impacted if I had chosen to leave Percy in the game ... by the time he was standing out there."

Tribune staff writers Tony Fabrizio and Joey Johnston contributed to this report.

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