Baseball almost had its third perfect game in a month tonight. Correction: baseball did have its third perfect game in a month tonight, but the record books won’t reflect that fact, because an umpire blew the call on (what should have been) the game’s final play:
Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers lost his bid for a perfect game Wednesday night with two outs in the ninth inning on a call that first base umpire Jim Joyce later admitted he blew.
First baseman Miguel Cabrera cleanly fielded Jason Donald’s grounder to his right and made an accurate throw to Galarraga covering the bag. The ball was there in time, and all of Comerica Park was ready to celebrate the 3-0 win over Cleveland, until Joyce emphatically signaled safe.
The veteran ump regretted it.
“I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce said. “I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay.”
“It was the biggest call of my career,” said Joyce, who became a full-time major league umpire in 1989.
“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and the echo answered: “Fraud!”
No, but really. Good on the ump for admitting his mistake, and undoubtedly he feels worse than anyone, but jeez.
Now the question is being asked: Should Bud Selig reverse the call and award Galarraga the perfect game? I’m inclined to agree with the writer and say “alas, no.”
Meanwhile, this is just further proof that Detroit is not allowed to have nice things. So it has been decreed, by God, apparently.
UPDATE: Here’s the video. The announcer’s reaction: “What a travesty. What an absolute travesty.”
The New York Times‘s Tyler Kepner calls it “easily the most egregious blown call in baseball over the last 25 years.” (Oddly, the headline writer apparently missed the memo, calling it merely a “Questionable Call.”)
UPDATE 2: Jennifer Granholm tweets: “As governor, I’m issuing a proclamation declaring Galarraga pitched a perfect game!”
Meanwhile, there’s funny commentary on Twitter under the tags #OtherJoyceCalls (my favorite: “Breaking: Jim Joyce declares British Petroleum safe in Gulf Oil Leak”), #JimJoyceFacts (e.g., “Jim Joyce absolutely hates raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” “Jim Joyce likes playing footsies with Larry Craig in public restrooms” and “Jim Joyce gave Old Yeller rabies”) and #gamesJimJoyceruined (“Jim Joyce kept Pedro in too long against the Yankees in 2003”).
UPDATE 3: Here’s audio of Joyce talking about the call.
Tough call. It’s an asterisk either way.
I consider myself to be a baseball fan. The tradition of the game matters to me.
Half of me is saying. “This is baseball. Bad calls, like bad weather, is just something you have to deal with and adjust to.” Who knows how many bad/blown calls there has been throughout the history of baseball. In fact the possibility of a blown call is one of the things I like about the game. I like the human element. I would hate to see instant replay be the result of this.
The other half of me is saying, “This is one of those times a commissioner has to act in the best interests of baseball, and over turn the call and grant the perfect game. At that point we can spend the next fifty years deciding whether or not the record should get an asterisk.” Over turning the call could not create a competitive injustice, because a correct call ends the game. Galarraga earned and deserves that perfect game.
By all accounts Galarraga has handled this perfectly. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is: he deserves as much credit for the way he has handled this as he does for the performance itself.
Lastly, I feel for the ump. How many of us would like to see the biggest mistake we ever made at work to be replayed 25 million times on prime time TV over the next 50 years? He came out and faced the reporters and made no excuses. His life is going to be hell for a while.
Watch, Jason Donald will now go on a 56-57 game hitting streak …
Detroit can have nice things! Just look at the Red Wings – won the Stanley Cup in 2008 and all.
And I do feel for the ump. I know someone who hosts minor league umps, and her insights help you see how hard it is to do this job. The umps get it wrong sometimes, but to have a mistake that prominent that everyone is now talking about has got to stink. Good on him for admitting his error.
LOL @ Joe Mama
gahrie, your comment got me thinking, why don’t we just create a new statistical category for errors by umpires? They can be scored the same way as regular errors, only they’d be attributed to the umpire instead of the pitcher or the fielder, and the official scorer can use replay after the fact to change an error to a hit or vice versa, depending on the evidence.
Thoughts anyone?
To make a long comment short:
This comes down to a simple question. Should we make the game more accurate and exactly fair (we can do it, easily, we have the technology, and it wouldn’t waist much of any time) or is the marginal inaccuracy of umpires a fundamental part of the game of baseball?
If the game should be exactly fair Bud should reverse the call and institute replay. Id it’s part of the game, then nothing should be done.
For the logic of the question consider:
As much as it is fun to make fun of the ump for this it isn’t, per-se, his fault. He was following the rules and the protocol for what you do as an ump. The runner from the camera angle was out by a solid half step true. But the protocol favors the runner. You cannot watch three things at one time, so you identify that the ball arrived, that the fielding player is touching the base and then whether or not the runner has arrived with a tie going to the runner, this basically gives the runner an extra half second or about a half step. Also this is a first base fields and pitcher covers first base play. That puts the umpire slightly out of position for an optimal angle. and in the position of having to confirm the pitcher has arrived at the base at almost the same time the runner is arriving (Consider the two camera shots that conclusively show the runner was out are reverse angle from where the umpire is positioned, and the third is 90 degrees off of where the umpire is positioned on the play). The pitcher likely obstructed a clear view of the base. So its possible the umpire could have deferred to the home plate assuming he had a better angle, or perhaps called a conference. But ultimately umpires call them as they see them. And within the context of the game you don’t change your call–ever. The only thing that changes a call within the context of the game is a finding on the rules not a finding of fact–findings of fact are final. Degrading the degree to which findings of fact are final simply leads to more arguments with managers.
This type of thing is either what fundamentally makes baseball baseball, or a serious flaw and an argument for instant replay. I would guess that 9 times out of 10 instant replay would favor the fielding team. For just those reasons above–because the current method favors the runner in almost all cases. So part of the question of instant replay is should we remove what is an inherent advantage of the runner? The only time replay favors the runner is on trapped or bobbled balls, which doesn’t happen nearly as often as a close call at a base, especially at the pro level, and especially miss calling it.
With instant replay there would be no more ties. There might be a 1/100th of a second difference or less but, depending on the equipment, that difference would be identifiable. (I would guess that what the first base umpire saw last night was a tie, and a tie goes to the runner. But a tie usually means that on video, the runner was out.)
Could Bud reverse this call? Sure. The call ends the game it doesn’t create any problems to change that call, and it sets some pretty amazing records for baseball. But doing so is only in the best interest of baseball if you also favor instant replay. And favoring replay does change, rather fundamentally, how the game is played.
From a time perspective, of course, replay doesn’t have much impact. Even if you ran replay every time the ball was put in play it wouldn’t matter much. The pitcher is still likely to spend more time scratching his balls and arguing silently with the catcher while the batter wanders in and out of the batters box knocking dirt of his cleats than the replay booth is going to spend double checking everything. If you were going to extend replay to balls and strikes you might have a problem. Except that there is already a computerized system that calls balls and strikes far more accurately than any umpire. In fact calls are already compared to that (in real time if you have MLB at bat) and the umpires scored on their performance. If the ump isn’t within a certain percentage of the computer he doesn’t get to run home plate anymore. But if you were going to have replay there wouldn’t be any point in having the umpire call balls and strikes, you could just let the computer do it. After all, it would make the call more accurate.
I suppose you could give each manger three challenges per game or something, but that might get rid of the spectacle of a manger kicking dirt all over an umpire (and some times stealing a base as they storm off the field in disgust…)
Note on my above comment. I’m actually not sure which side I come down on as far as the replay debate goes. I think there are good arguments for both.
Though consider, fencing has added instant replay and before that electronic scoring. This is perhaps as traditional as it gets when it comes to sports. However, they seem more than willing to take the “human factor” out in favor of fairness. And honestly, speaking as someone who has officiated fencing matches, there are a few times I would have loved to have had replay as a tool.
I guess steroids did matter. Now that all the juiceheads are out of the sport, pitchers are doing much much better.
I called baseball a sport, whoops. I meant pass-time, and in this day and age of mass entertainment and technology, I would have thought people would have more to do than watch something so boring and pointless.
Give Gallaraga the perfect game, its the right thing to do. This isn’t really a slippery slope to instant reply or intervention on a wide scale (although it can be used in support of that, and its even MORE likely to be used in support of that if the results stand), no its an extraordinary circumstance. Its a freaking perfect game, he deserves the honor, not only because he earned it, but because of the classy way he handled it afterwards. Further, its not even complicated because the win/loss doesn’t change based on what happened afterwards.
I’m coming around to precisely that position, David (except that, while I agree he’s been very very classy about it, I don’t really think that properly comes into Selig’s calculus).
I do love Joe Mama’s scenario, though. “Watch, Jason Donald will now go on a 56-57 game hitting streak.” FWIW, he’s on a two-game “streak”, counting last night. So, if Selig reverses the call, and Donald then hits in 55 straight games (piece of cake!), he’ll be one short of DiMaggio, but would be one ahead of him if Selig hadn’t reversed the call. That would be AWESOME. lol.
There is no evidence to support the clam that baseball players are off the juice. If baseball had a comprehensive anti-doping program and serious penalties for doping, perhaps I would agree with that statement.
David, it’s not a matter of a slippery slope to instant replay. It simply is the same logic. It is the same logic that would argue in favor of making it a perfect game as would argue for replay. That is, fixing bad calls. Either baseball isn’t baseball without the possibility of a blown call or in the interest of fairness and accuracy we should fix blown calls.
Personally, I find myself leaning more towards fix the blown calls. Players not umpires should decide the outcome of games. Perhaps a challenge system, or there is a booth review available until the next pitch is thrown. I’m not sure how you would work out the nuts and bolts, but I don’t think, in the long run and in the aggregate that replay would hurt the game.
I thought they do have much more comprehensive testing now with Manny Ramirez biting the dust bigtime last season, where’s Barry Bonds anyway, and many many others now getting popped, unlike the Canseco/McGuire era. Granted, the juicing may still be going on, but most likely less than ever before in the last 40 years.