The Pecan Park Eagle

On the Day After the Perfect Game Blown Call, Umpire Jim Joyce joins Pitcher Armando Galarraga at home plate to enter the Tiger's Thursday lineup and take their places together in history as two joined-at-the-soul-hips "Heartbreak Kids."

Cleveland Manager Manny Acta is among those who think that Commissioner Bud Selig did the right thing by refusing to reverse the blown call by umpire Jim Joyce that blew the perfect game of Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga on the 27th and potentially final out of Wednesday’s perfect game effort against the Indians. “If he had done something like that, he would have opened a whole can of worms,” said Acta. “If you change that, then the next thing we’d want him to do is change the play before that one.”

Acta had to be engaging in hyperbole in this instance. Does anyone remember the play before the big one at first base? And the one before that one was the Willie Mays-like catch by the center fielder. Does anyone really want to reverse that call?

As I told a friend of mine last night, I fully respect his support for the idea of leaving things as they stand in protection of the “sanctity” of baseball history, but that I no longer feel married to that point of view in situations where an obvious uncontested wrong call could be corrected for the sanctity of  getting things rights for the record in baseball history.

Galarraga’s perfect game would have been the third in a month, but only the 21st in a history of baseball that goes back to 1869. How big is that? No one is arguing in favor of the original “safe” call that even umpire Joyce admirably now admits was a blown call. Unless Bud Selig had been willing to use his power “for the greater good of baseball” to make it right by reversing the call and ending the game on that play as the 3-1 put out it actually was, that record is now lost forever.

Please note: I would not support the reversal had the game continued from Joyce’s blown call and turned into an Indians’ victory, but that did not happen. The very next batter was retired to end the game as a Detroit win, the result that would have followed from the perfect game victory. I also would not have supported reversing the call if the safe/out verdict by instant replay had been in question – or if umpire Joyce had stuck steadfastly to his original call. Under either of those circumstances, or by reversing a Cleveland victory, we would have been tampering with history in ways that go far beyond correcting an obvious wrong.

Twenty years ago, I would not have even entertained this idea, but I’ve changed, for better or worse. Today I think getting the truth right, especially when it frees people from unwarranted pain, is far more important than standing on ceremony. As things now stand, two people, pitcher Galarraga and umpire Joyce are going to be forced to live with the full brunt of an untruth (the runner was safe for a “hit”) that alters each of their lives forever.

No one on earth can take away the pain that Wednesday’s game will be forever spoiled by what actually happened, but Commissioner Bud Selig does have the power to right a wrong that will especially punish the diligent conscience of umpire Joyce forever, if he does not.

The criminal justice system is fairer. If the courts send a man to prison for a crime he didn’t commit and that fact is later proven to be the case, what do they do? They let him out. They don’t just stand on the idea that “well, we’d like to let the man out, but sending him to prison already has happened so we’ll just have to leave him there,” nor do they buy into Acta’s implied concern that “we can’t free a single innocent man. If we let one free person out of jail, then all the wrongly imprisoned will want out too.”

Do the right thing in a timely way. Restore Armando Galarraga as the owner of baseball history’s 21st perfect game and free two men from a lifetime balance of pain over an outcome that could have been reversed for a greater good that far surpasses one man’s loss of a badly earned infield single.

Next up? Don’t wait for a clearer warning, baseball. Get your act together on how you want to use technology in the near future (as in – as soon as possible) to help avoid this sort of thing without slowing the game into a pool of total molasses.

Blown Umpire Call on 27th Batter Costs Detroit Pitcher Galarraga His Perfect Game!

I was piqued the other day when umpire Bill Hohn tossed Astro pitcher Roy Oswalt in the third inning for being frustrated with his postage stamp strike zone. Today I am enraged over the fact that a horrible call by umpire Jim Joyce yesterday on the 27th batter of the game has cost Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga his perfect game. With the pitcher himself covering first base on what should have been – indeed was – the last out by way of a grounder on every batter he had faced, Joyce called the runner safe. He would admit his error later upon an examination of the replay after the game, but the perfect game was still lost forever.

The Galarraga perfecto would have been the third such animal in thirty days, the only time that three of these most improbable of all baseball jewels have adorned the neck of our national game in a lone season of play. It would’ve also been only the 21st perfect game in major league history. Now it will simply have to be the shared bad dream of pitcher Galarraga and umpire Joyce, and all others of us who care about these things, from here to kingdom come.

I haven’t been this upset over the outcome of a baseball contest since Game Six of the 1986 National League Championship Series between the New York Mets and the Houston Astros. At least that one turned on managerial decisions and what happened on the field. This one – THIS ONE – turned only on  what one game official saw with his naked brain and eye against what we could have ascertained accurately had instant replay been permissible under the circumstances.

Look! Nobody wants this kind of outcome. Not umpire Joyce. Not pitcher Galarraga. Not the players. And not the fans. As per usual, change will now come to baseball on the heels of disaster. It’s time to make even greater use of instant reply to keep this sort of thing from happening again.

When instant replay was approved a couple of years ago for fair/foul and distance marker calls on home runs, it was done to keep blown perceptual decisions of the umpire’s fallible human eye from wrongly affecting the outcome of games. Shouldn’t we also try to extend that same protection to the integrity of baseball history?

We already know that instant replays do not resolve all questionable calls and that it would be too time-consuming to allow them on every play. Some errors are going to simply continue, especially on the distorted ways the human eye sees the strike zone differently from umpire to umpire. Until we can get to a point of calling balls and strikes by laser ray, I don’t see balls and strikes consistency getting much better,

This thing that happened yesterday, however, is a horse of a different color. Instant replay clearly showed that the 27th batter of the game was OUT by a couple of feet on the grounder play at first base. Had instant replay been allowable under the circumstances, history could have been correctly registered with no shame upon the umpire’s missed observation – and we would not all be sitting around today trying to figure out a way to make anger, remorse, and regret digestible.

What kind of sauce tastes good with a boiled dead rat, anyway?

Here’s what I propose as protection against the repetition of yesterday’s improbable rat boil:

Any time a pitcher enters the ninth inning with a no-hitter going, instant replay should be allowable on any questionable field play affecting safe/out calls. For an umpire’s “safe” call on any runner to be reversed, there must be clear evidence on tape to support an overrule. This condition will continue in the game for as long as the pitcher remains in a position to throw either a no-hitter or perfect game. and will cease as an appeal option as soon as a hit is recorded. Decisions on instant replay reviews will be handled in the same manner as the one in place now for foul/fair balls and home runs.

Do it now, Commissioner Selig. The integrity of the game’s history is on the line.