Is Umpiring really that bad?

I remember Gary Cooper's line in the Movie "The Pride of the Yankees". He says:"One thing I've learned is no matter how much arguing you do, you can't change the call of the umpire".

Lou Gehrig is lucky he never got to see digital high definition replays. I do believe this one principle to be true; Umpires blow calls. But I still believe they blow calls indiscriminately. Last night in the GIANTS V ORIOLES GAME I saw what could have been possibly the ugliest called game in history. You would have thought that there was a "FIX" in on this game. Poor Juan Samuel couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Now folks remember; THIS IS A GIANTS BLOG.

But we don't want to win games this way. The first case that Samuel argued at 2nd base was more than legit. Freddy Chez was nowhere near 2nd base when he made the pivot on the double play.

The double off the RF wall should have/could have been a Home run. Krukow was announcing "hurry up and pitch the ball".

The play at first was so badly blown, it was worse or more blatant than the call that lost Galaraga his perfect game.

Are the Umpires afraid to make safe calls now? An even better question would be; was it always this way? Are we just seeing it better on replay with HD and a 60 inch screen?

As much as I think we're seeing a lot of bad calls, I don't think we need to rush to using video replay. I think what we saw last night was just sloppy umpiring. It all went against the Orioles which is unfortunate. At least the Umps didn't try using 2 wrongs to make a right. I don't think the Umps were against the Orioles. I just think the Orioles were unfortunate to be on the receiving end of some pretty bad calls.