Replay ball!

Umpires will be allowed to check video on calls involving home runs starting tomorrow, after Major League Baseball reversed its decades-long opposition.

"Like everything else in life, there are times that you have to make an adjustment," baseball commissioner Bud Selig said yesterday. "My opposition to unlimited instant replay is still very much in play. I really think that the game has prospered for well over a century now doing things the way we did it."

Selig, who described himself as "old-fashioned" and an admirer of baseball's "human element," softened his opposition after a rash of blown calls this year.

Video will be used only on so-called "boundary calls," such as determining whether fly balls went over the fence, whether potential home runs were fair or foul and whether there was fan interference.

The NFL first used replay to aid officials in 1986, the NHL in 1991 and the NBA in 2002. Even at stuffy old Wimbledon, technology has been used on line calls since 2006.

Baseball general managers voted 25-5 in November to recommend use the technology, and baseball's lawyers spent recent weeks finalizing agreements with the unions for umpires and for players.

"Some people thought that we ought to wait until the postseason," Selig said. "I'd rather go into the postseason knowing that we've already used it."