Two perfect games in a week? Three perfect games in a month? Well, yes and no. Unfortunately for Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers, umpire Jim Joyce blew an incredibly easy call with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to cost Galarraga a perfect game. And cost center fielder Austin Jackson his Willie Mays moment.
Much outrage will ensue, but that's baseball. Joyce immediately after the game admitted he got the call wrong, and to his credit Galarraga is handling the whole incident like a gentleman. But it is time for instant replay in baseball, using something similar to the challenge system currently used by the NFL.
Mumford And Sons - Little Lion Man
3 comments:
In light of this story, The Anchoress makes a thoughtful argument against introducing replay of close calls to baseball. She finds more value in Umpire James Joyce's apology, and in Armando Galarraga's gracious acceptance.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/06/03/replay-will-ruin-baseball/
Her argument against replay is the kind of wispy, metaphysical take on baseball and its humanity that drives me nuts. An interesting conversation can grow out of getting something wrong, but is it really preferable to getting it right? Players make errors; that's part of the game, and the greater the skill, the better the performance. You want to have good players because you want to win. But umpires serve a completely different purpose. They're there to facilitate the game. Their job is to get it right. And when they get it wrong - and the whole world can see that it was wrong - the whole thing becomes a fiction. Galarraga pitched a perfect game. Everyone knows it. But now we have to pretend that he didn't because Joyce made a mistake that should be correctable but isn't. It's an almost Orwellian misuse of language. Galarraga did what he did. Now we're having an unnecessary debate about what to call it.
The Anchoress can take her rainbows and unicorns off my baseball field. It's the umpires job to get it right and replay can only help serve that purpose.
Post a Comment