Those three umpires blew calls so badly and conspicuously that baseball had little choice but to follow other sports in using video technology to correct errors.
Denkinger missed a simple call at first base in the 1985 World Series that wound up swinging the Series in the Royals' favor. Joyce's incorrect call at first base in 2010 cost Detroit's Armando Galarraga a chance at a perfect game.
Meals put his name on the Pittsburgh sports infamy list in 2011 when he couldn't see that the Braves' Julio Lugo was tagged out at home plate in the 19th inning.
The plays live forever on the Internet, but everyone moves on knowing the wrong call was made. Salem, Ohio's Meals was later promoted to crew chief and will work Tuesday's All-Star game.
The cumulative effect was to create demand for replay review, which started on "boundary" plays. It was a major step for baseball to acknowledge that umpires running toward the outfield might not be entirely certain if a ball a hundred feet away was fair or foul, or whether it had been affected by fan interference.
The theory was sound: Get the call right. What sense did it make to live with a result that everyone could see was wrong?
Then they expanded replay. Now it's a monster.
The spirit of replay was correct. But now it's being used to determine whether a sliding base stealer may have lost contact with the bag for a split second while the tag was being applied.
Some players over slide the base, and should be called for that. If anyone is doing the blatant over slide (the Nyjer Morgan model), he should be called out.
But if someone is sliding in and oh-so-temporarily fails to hold the base, should a safe call be overturned if it takes the most nitpicking video evidence to reverse it?
If it takes super slow motion and freeze frame to make the case, haven't we gone beyond the spirit of things? It's even worse when the game stops for several minutes while the game umpires clamp on headsets and talk to colleagues at the replay center in New York.
There's always a shakeout period on replay policies and the degrees of rule enforcement.
Once the NHL disallowed goals if replay found a player with an inch of his skate blade in the crease. It didn't matter if the breach affected the play or not.
They realized that was ridiculously petty and it's tilted totally in the other direction. Now players can pretty much have lunch in the crease with no penalty.
Baseball needs to separate the clinical from the practical. Because every second base slide is under the microscope, runners are desperately hugging the bag like it's a much-loved teddy bear. The fielders applying the tags are clutching the runners like they're getting ready to polka.
It's silly. Replay is a great tool. Part of the application is knowing when not to use it.
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--FIZZLING OUT
Gerrit Cole heads into his first All-Star appearance with a 13-3 record, and much has been made of the fact this is the best pre-All-Star performance by a Pirates pitcher since Dock Ellis and Ken Brett.
Ellis was 14-3 at the break in 1971, and Brett had a 12-6 record at the 1974 break.
Better hope that Cole doesn't duplicate the seasons they had after the hot starts.
Ellis seemed to be a lock for a 20-win season. He finished 19-9 and wasn't of much value in the postseason.
Brett only won one more game, finishing 13-9. His chronic shoulder problems flared up and he gave the Pirates two ineffective innings in the playoffs.
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--VOTING IRREGULARITY
The demise of paper ballots in All-Star voting reminds of the days when the Three Rivers Stadium ushers refused to hand them out to fans.
The union deemed that a change in work rules that hadn't been negotiated.
Did it really matter? Does anyone believe MLB actually counted the write-in votes on all those cards?
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--SORRY, NOT SAFE
The sports books in Las Vegas take action on everything. So next year you have to figure they'll establish an over/under line on how many NFL players blow up their hands over the Fourth of July weekend.
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