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Aside from missing a practically impossible call (for a mere human, anyway) in Game 4 -- Ryan Howard never did touch the plate in the fourth inning -- the umpires had a pretty good night. Of course, the umpires have been much maligned this fall, and not without good reason. Still, one wonders what's changed in recent years: the umpiring itself, or our ability to judge the umpiring. I happened to run across this, from Bill James' notes (subscription) upon recently watching a 1974 World Series game on TV:

2. The umpiring is bad, and the announcers don’t say anything about it. I would speculate that instant replay, along with training programs implemented by MLB in the late 1990s, have sharpened the umpiring more than we realize.

3. Second inning, Joe Rudi on first, Ray Fosse hits a ground ball to third. The play goes 5-4—but it is way late. Rudi slides into second far ahead of the throw, is called out. …nobody says anything about it. Rudi just runs off the field.

4. But that’s nothing compared to a double play in the bottom of the inning. Runners on first and second, Cey grounds to shortstop for a 6-4-3 Double Play.

But neither runner is anywhere NEAR being out. On the play at second Dick Green is 3 to 4 feet off of second base, and hasn’t BEEN on second base anytime recently. I would have thought the “in the neighborhood” call at second was getting worse, rather than better, but ... I haven’t seen anything like that in years. There is NO question that if you did that now, the umpire would not give you the call.

And then Cey beats the throw to first, and they call him out as well.

This has little bearing on the current situation, but I think it's worth noting that the umpiring could be a lot worse than it is today.

Just in the last few days, we've seen more calls for the expanded use of video review, including from expected sources (Joe Sheehan) and unexpected (Tom Boswell).

When you've just about everyone in the media lining up behind something, you can guess it's going to happen eventually.

Of course, when "eventually" happens is anybody's guess. Because there's one big roadblock: Commissioner-for-Life Bud Selig. From a recent piece by Jim Caple:

"The more baseball people I talk to, there is a lot of trepidation about it and I think their trepidation is fair," Selig told reporters before Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday. "I've spent a lot of time [on this] over the past month and will spend a lot of time in the ensuing months as well. I don't want to overreact. You can make light of that but when you start to think you're going to have more intrusions -- and even if they're good intrusions -- it's something that you have to be very careful about. Affecting the game on the field is not something I really want to do."

Selig has not been quick to embrace new technology over baseball tradition, in part due to worries about the pace of games.

"Life is changing and I understand that," he said. "I do like the human element and I think the human element for the last 130 years has worked pretty well. There have been controversies but there are controversies in every sport."

Really? Which baseball people, exactly, has he been talking to? And while it's certainly true that there are controversies in every sport, shouldn't the administrators of the sports do what they can to limit controversies?

I worry about the pace of the game, too. But it's impossible to make an informed judgment about expanded video review without first coming up with some ideas for a new system, and then testing those ideas with some rigor. Has any of this been done, or even seriously considered? I don't get the impression that it has. Nor do I get the impression that it will be, as long as Selig is running the show.

The Bud likes what the Bud hath wrought, and no man on Earth shall meddle further with the Human Element while the Bud still walks amongst us.