I promised myself that this wouldn't be a sports-only blog, but sports are just about the easiest thing to write a few lines about now and then. That said, I'm also still number-crunching and trying to figure out how to properly express how I feel about Daisuke Matsuzaka.
Last night, Nicole and I went to trivia with a couple of our friends, as we do almost every Wednesday night. My buddy Darren and I were BSing about the season so far, and fantasy sports, and just baseball in general when he got a message from another of his friends about a perfect game being ruined in Detroit by a bad call from an umpire. Having watched the final innings of both the Braden and Halladay perfect games on MLB Network (who are doing a bang-up job this season, by the way), I thought that the message must have gotten garbled, because three perfectos in one year (barely over two months, at that!) seemed just short of impossible. I checked the MLB headlines on my cell phone, read the short blurb, and couldn't wait to see the highlights when I got home.
By now, it's all old news. I assume that even the great majority of the nation's non-sports fans even know what happened last night. I also assume that 99% of the population feels that Galarraga deserves to be awarded the perfect game upon some kind of ruling by Commissioner Bud Selig (the other 1% being total jerks - people in Philly once booed Santa; these people exist).
So to add my thoughts to the tens of thousands of other bloggers who are also writing about this today:
Umpire Jim Joyce apologized. He admitted he was wrong, and he legitimately sounded very, very sorry for missing the call. Honest apologies are so hard to come by today in any facet of life, and his was from the heart. Everyone needs to give the guy a little slack. The poor bastard took the field in tears today in Detroit. Was it a big deal? Absolutely. But only in perspective to sport. Nobody got hurt. Nobody's livelihood was destroyed.
In the long-term, this is almost a better story - no offense to Mark Buehrle, for instance, but in 10 years, people are going to remember this game, not his. Even if Bud Selig doesn't overturn this (and he absolutely should, of course), the people who matter - the fans - will always know the truth. I think that as far as we're all concerned, it was a perfect game, official or not. Really, that's what matters.
You know what would be kind of cool, though? If Bud Selig does overturn this, then Galarraga would have the first regulation-length 28-hitter perfect game in history, if you look at it that way!
So yes, I feel that Bud Selig "absolutely should" overturn the decision, but I honestly don't know that he can, because he'd be opening himself up to criticism every time a controversial play occurs and he does nothing.
But I think that this is a very, very special exception:
1. It's recent. It's not worth going back to overturn the Vince Coleman call in the 1985 World Series at this point, because it wouldn't mean anything. This is fresh and relevant.
2. The umpire admits he was wrong and clearly wishes he could go back in time. This wasn't a matter of being screened by a defensive player and not seeing things clearly. He blew it, he admitted he blew it, and there's no disputing that he blew it.
3. It didn't affect the outcome of the game. Galarraga retired the next player, preserving the score at 3-0 and securing the win. It doesn't reverse a loss or take a run off the scoreboard, and it doesn't affect any of the players' stats adversely other than the batter who was incorrectly awarded a hit. I'm sure the batter, Jason Donald, would happily give up his 1-for-3 line in the box score for an 0-for-3 in order to "correct" history. Likewise, I'm sure that Trevor Crowe, who made the as-of-now "official" final out, wouldn't mind erasing an 0-4 for an 0-3, as minor as that change would be.
4. Galarraga was a class act in the face of a horrible set of circumstances. Things would have gotten incredibly bad if the pitcher had been Carlos Zambrano, for instance. Joyce would have ended up in the hospital, and Zambrano would have ended up in jail.
5. To not change it would be an incredibly short-sighted, completely dickish move by MLB.
And given the way Selig handles things, I'm sad to say it's what I expect to happen. But we'll see, and as a baseball fan I'm definitely going to keep my fingers crossed that Selig does, in fact, overrule the play.
Simply, and for no other reason, because it's the obvious and right thing to do.
