Quote:
Originally Posted by
WalkTheCourse 
Yes Lucius, I in fact had this discussion yesterday.
Employ a 5th umpire that sits in a booth, and issue "challenges" to each manager, which can be used on fair/foul, safe/out. and homerun/no homerun calls... Simple as that.
Extra time would be spent getting the call right, but LESS time would be spent on managers running out of the dugout, guns a blazin, and yelling at umpires till they deliberately get themselves kicked out of the game to fire up their team!
I think the manager throwing a tantrum is pretty entertaining and it adds something to their role. I think they'd honestly still argue balls and strikes, and any number of other minutiae in the rules. Being the manager is pretty much a formality, you give interviews and walk out to the mound to change pitchers. At least you can show some emotion and personality when you put on a show like that. Fires up your players and the crowd, the officials get a verbal spanking which is generally quite warranted, and vents the frustration.
The thing that made this so stupid was that Girardi couldn't even do that; it was the end of the game. You could see him in the dugout thinking about running onto the field, but he'd just get suspended for the next entire game or worse. At least if they had another out to deal with, that batter would have a shot to save the game. But since it ended the game instead of tying it with 2 outs, it unquestionably affected the outcome of the game. In the 6th inning, you get a bad break but you can't claim you would've won, but in this case it was a tie at the very least, extra innings most likely. It's like a team scoring a touchdown with time expiring but the refs decide to award them 10 points instead of 6.