The umpires in the MLB playoffs have been awful. I am not breaking a news story here, the officiating has been horrendous with virtually all of the poor calls shown over and over again on replay.

Last night in Game 2 of the World Series the umpires made two more obviously wrong calls.

If you listen to ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd (maybe the funniest and most honest sports radio personality) you have heard him consistently rip Major League Baseball for their refusal to upgrade their game with instant replay. Cowherd has repeatedly explained that he believes the reason MLB attendance and television ratings are going down is because the game of baseball is controlled by its traditionalists who refuse to allow the game to evolve.

I would be surprised if Colin Cowherd doesn’t point to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s comments about poor officiating  before last nights game. Selig is quoted by Jim Caple of ESPN.com:

The more baseball people I talk to, there is a lot of trepidation about it and I think their trepidation is fair. 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 their 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.

and Selig continued:

Life is changing and I understand that. 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.

What other sport, industry or business can say that “the last 130 years has worked pretty well” as a reason not to change when the business is trending down?

Baseball’s attendance is down, their television ratings are down, but hey, it has worked well for 130 years so we’re not going to change.

I’ll guess I’ll do what most of America is doing, turn on the NFL or college football and forget about baseball. That will probably work for the next 130 years.