Major League Baseball

Rhys Hoskins' home-run controversy shows emotional limits of instant replay

Updated Jul. 21, 2021 8:57 p.m. ET

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

For about four minutes Sunday night, Rhys Hoskins had hit a home run.

At around 10:52 p.m. ET, the Phillies' first baseman lined an Edwin Díaz heater deep to right field. The ball clattered off something high above the base of the wall and ricocheted back into the field of play. Hoskins rounded the bases, for the 100th time in his MLB career, arms aloft, as the Philly fans roared themselves into a frenzy.

Until about 10:56 p.m. ET, the Mets and Phillies were tied at eight in the ninth inning of an absolutely wild game that included multiple lead changes, a bunch of yelling, some weird baseball kerfuffles and zero well-oiled baseball teams.

Hoskins looked like a hero redeemed after an earlier blunder of his led to a Mets run. Díaz, on the other hand, was the goat yet again, as the affable, flame-throwing closer once more found himself on the sharp end of an inexplicable, ninth-inning turn of events.

Extra innings — and their abominable runner-on-second rule — were fast approaching. The neutral baseball community rejoiced over the possibility of yet another off-the-rails, late-night contest that could go on forever.

But in an instant, everything changed.

Frame by frame slow motion revealed the truth: Hoskins’ home run was, in fact, not. The liner had smacked off a metal railing atop the right-field fence, not off a seat beyond the wall, which is what it looked like in real time. Hoskins was returned to second base, a run was removed from the board, and the Mets won a batter later when Jeurys Familia struck out Bryce Harper.

It is, with the help of replay, an indisputable fact that the ball Hoskins crushed did not go over the fence and was thus not a home run. Those are the baseball rules. Folks can arm wave about the ground rules of Citizens Bank Park all they want, but the fact is simple: Rhys Hoskins did not hit an over-the-fence bomb.

But for me, neither a Mets fan nor a Phillies fan, this whole situation highlighted the emotional constraints of instant replay. Yes, the call was factually correct. And yes, duh, if you’re a Mets fan, you had a phenomenal time watching the end of this baseball tilt.

But in my eyes — and, I'm sure, the eyes of other neutrals — there was something ... disappointing or ... unfulfilling about the whole thing.

I think replay in baseball is usually good. It mostly fixes glaringly bad calls, and it doesn’t take up too much time like it used to. Sure, from time to time, it doesn’t actually do its job, and some obvious plays fall through the cracks, but generally, it’s fine.

But there was something about the Hoskins homer-not-homer that left me feeling weird about how we interact with replay as fans, particularly during important game moments. When Rhys made contact, non-Mets Baseball Twitter exploded with joy. The Phillies exploded with joy. Citizens Bank Park exploded with joy. And then three minutes later, we had to put the cork back in the bottle.

By then, the champagne was flat.

This phenomenon happens all too often in soccer, a sport reliant on three or four emotional explosions over the course of an afternoon. Someone scores, a two-minute delay ensues, someone is deemed offsides, and someone has now not actually scored. And that’s no one’s fault! Fans should be able to react uncontrollably to what they think they see on the field through fandom-colored glasses. Players too.

Sometimes, the truth just gets in the way.

The Hopkins episode Sunday hit me extra close because, for the past four years, I’ve congratulated him on every single home run he has hit. People ask me all the time how it started, and honestly, I don’t remember. I think I just thought it was funny and then kept doing it. I wish I had a better story.

Anyway, when Rhys laced that ball deep to right Sunday, I congratulated him, as I’ve done the previous 99 times he homered in the bigs. Then the replay happened, and I was left with a big fat lie on my Twitter feed. I ended up deleting the tweet because, again, it was not a home run.

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I don’t want to ever get to a place where, in a big moment, regular season or playoffs, something monumental happens, and my immediate reaction is to think about the ever-presence of replay. That’s a large cloud perpetually looming, my dear friends.

To be clear, I’m not advocating we get rid of instant replay because I was half-frustrated for 10 minutes about a dumb tweet thread getting slightly more complicated. The Mets won and deserved to win. It was a double and not a home run. I actually think replay should stay as is, so I don’t have a good solution to the thing I’m whining about. But it’s undeniable that replay has forever altered the way we consume crucial moments of this beautifully dumb sport.

I just want to enjoy baseball for itself and not be doing the emotional equivalent of motioning to the dugout with the universal baseball hands over headphones symbol whenever something bananas happens in the ninth inning of a close game. We shouldn’t have to second-guess the good things our eyes have seen. In a utopia, exuberance would not have to operate conditionally, reliant on the whims of a guy in front of a monitor in New York City.

But alas, we live here on earth, in this particular simulation where the Mets hung on to win a wild one and Rhys Hoskins has 99 career home runs, even though he had 100 for a few brief moments.

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.