Opinion

There's one thing in Major League Baseball that it tries to hang on to, and that is the human element of the game. This means there are going to be missed calls on the field, and fans just have to accept it.

The NBA, NHL, and NFL all have adapted with the technology and have approved the use of replay in certain situations. In fact, the NFL has the most plays that can be reviewed.

Omar Vizquel was never a dominating offensive player.

With a career batting average of .273 and never having more than 14 home runs in a season, Vizquel was not an "offensive player" by any stretch of the imagination.

But a defensive player, that he was.

Vizquel's 11 Gold Gloves speak for themselves, and his presence on the baseball field, even now at the tender age of 42 with the Texas Rangers, is still big. 

My question is, after 21 major league seasons and a closet full of hardware, should Omar Vizquel be a Hall of Famer?

Can someone round up Tom Hanks?

He needs to have a sit down with Ron Gardenhire, the Minnesota Twins and their fans.

We need good 'ol Tom to remind everyone, "There's no crying in baseball." 

Enough already with the blown call by Phil Cuzzi on Joe Mauer's ground-rule double in the top of the 11th.

During Thursday night's American League Division Series game between the Anaheim Angels and Boston Red Sox, first base umpire C.B. Bucknor had an absolutely horrendous evening. He mangled two obscenely easy calls at the bag, calls that had no business being missed and resulted in erroneous baserunners for the Halos.

Luckily for Bucknor, neither gaffe materially affected the outcome.

On Friday night, the Baseball Gods were not so merciful.

Minneapolis is a modern Mudville tonight. Gloom hangs like the first snow snow clouds of a bitter upper-midwestern autumn over shell-shocked Twins fans. A mere three outs from stealing the New York Yankees' home-field advantage in their American League Division Series, and holding a seemingly comfortable two-run lead as closer Joe Nathan entered to begin the bottom of the ninth inning, Minnesota blew its golden opportunity. A Mark Teixeira single, followed by a game-tying two-run opposite-field home run by Alex Rodriguez, sent the game to extra innings.

This article is the fifth in a six part series discussing the players on the Atlanta Braves' 25-man roster that will be free agents this offseason.

The American League Championship Series belongs to Fox Sports in a week, and Fox is already salivating for a Yankees/Red Sox series.

Who can blame them? Twins offer no challenge to the Yankees based on their history against them in this decade, and the Red Sox historically own the Angels.

It's hard to believe the Twins will defeat the Yankees this time around. The Twins lack starting pitching for them to slay off the Yankees.

The Angels need to be called on to save baseball fans from an overhyped rivalry between New York and Boston.

Mercifully, the Houston Astros 2009 season is over.

74 wins, 88 losses; a very disappointing year in the National League Central.

For Houston, many moves are in order, but naming a new manager must be a priority.

Astros General Manager Ed Wade told MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart (the beat writer for the Houston baseball team) on Monday that he hopes to begin making contact with potential skipper candidates by the week’s end.

They say that sometimes you can predict the outcome of a baseball game strictly from the first batter to take his hacks.

Unfortunately for the Colorado Rockies, that saying rang true in their opening bout with the Philadelphia Phillies in Game One of the National League Division Series.

When Dexter Fowler swung at Cliff Lee's first pitch of the game, flying out weakly to right field, it was a sad portent of things to come for the red-hot Rox in their eventual 5-1 drubbing at the hands of the NL East Champions.

The Tigers face a number of arbitration situations this offseason, and a fair number of them involve players who could potentially net the Tigers some extra draft picks. Today, I'm going to kickoff a series in which I will look at each of these players. I'm going to start with Brandon Lyon because, well, he's the first one of these players who came to mind.