When it comes to baseball, I am ultra-conservative: I don’t believe in interleague play; I don’t like the wild card; I think there should only be two divisions in each league; I oppose the designated hitter rule; I think players should have to wear stirrups; I believe that baseball parks should have organs and not use pre-recorded music; I think the first game of the season should always be played in Cincinnati, and never outside the United States. As a traditionalist, I naturally oppose instant replay, since I recognize that umpires almost always make the right call. But I think that something must be done about the botched call that cost Detroit’s Armando Galarraga a perfect game tonight against Cleveland. Bud Selig, who has done so much to hurt baseball must step in, void Jim Joyce’s call (which Joyce admits was wrong), and score Galarraga’s effort perfect. The pitcher won’t get to enjoy the roar of the home crowd, and he will have missed out on being carried from the field on the shoulders of his teammates, but his name will go down in history. He deserves it.
UPDATE: A day after the tragically bad call by Jim Joyce, he stood on the field in Detroit, visibly weeping, and shook Armando Galarraga’s hand. Joyce is clearly distraught about his mistake – obviously more upset than Galarraga himself, who has handled this ordeal with tremendous class.
Meanwhile, on mlb.com, Hal Bodley makes a considered, but ultimately illogical defense of Bud Selig’s decision to not interfere with the outcome of the game. Bodley admits that his first reaction was to demand that Joyce’s call be overturned. But, he writes, “had Selig taken the easy way out he would have established a precedent that could have come back to haunt him and the sport. Years from now, that decision would be an integral part of his legacy”.
True, overturning the call would be unusual, and it would go against the perfectly imperfect nature of baseball, in which human error is sometimes a part of the game, but umpires’ decisions are final. But where Bodley loses me is in his correct assertion that this call will lead to expanded use of instant replay. What I wonder is this: if Joyce’s call leads to more instant replay, which will inevitably lead to other umpires’ calls being overturned, what’s the point of not just reversing this decision right now?
Filed under: Current Events, Sports on June 2nd, 2010 | 2 Comments »