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YES, I SAID IT FIRST.
MIGHT JUST DENY WE EXIST
By Patrick Morand, Senior Editor, “YES, I SAID IT FIRST”
Joyce’s call has been referred to as unfair, a great mistake, the biggest missed call in sports history, a very sad result, a failing of baseball, a failing of history, a great injustice even outside of regular baseball circles and just unbelievable. The last adjective was my own – and I used it as I saw the play. Generally when I watch baseball I make mistakes all the time trying to judge plays at first base. I have been known to doubt the call and rewind my PVR to replay it frame by frame to prove the umpire missed the call. Most of the time I myself am proven wrong when I hit replay and slow the tape down. For a miniscule percent of the time it is so close it could go either way. For the last out of a potential perfect game between Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians on which Joyce made his error it wasn’t even close. It was obvious. Anybody who watched at regular speed or slow motion would have gotten it right, but the umpire got it wrong. The umpire admitted his mistake after the game. Apparently he was the only person who watched the game that for an inkling of a second thought that play might have been safe. He still apologized for being so wrong. Like the citizens of class they are, the Detroit Tigers, Gallaraga himself and many people in baseball forgave Joyce for the gross error, and concede that while the history books will not actually say it was a perfect game that is exactly what they witnessed. Gallaraga remarked that he has video proof to show that he really was perfect that Wednesday evening. He will not need an asterisk or record book to show this to his grandchildren in 60 years because it’s obvious and part of the video record of the world. “I have the DVD”.... For most old no-hitters and perfect game accounts we have to take the word of the scorers’ records from the game that history was made. They did not always have video to scrutinize. Funny though in 1991 a committee developed by Major League Baseball actually went back and changed the record books by throwing out fifty “no hitters” that they thought should not qualify to be no-nos. So you figure that with so much certainty that Gallaraga did pitch a perfect game, and that nothing of consequence happened after the blown call the league could go back with the umpire’s admission of a missed call and reverse a 28 batter shutout into a 27 batter perfect game? Everybody agrees that it was an out. Nobody can call it a close enough play that it should not be changed. Yes technically baseball does not have video replay for those sorts of calls, but it would only confirm properly what we already think. I am not so sure I agree with every change to the record books that then Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent made in the early 1990s, but I did not watch those games. A strange thing happens when a player is pitching a perfect game or even a no hitter. As the game moves along more people start to watch. Fans of the opposing team sometimes switch allegiances for those later innings so they can actually be a part of cheering for history. Word spreads and people begin to tune in to see it happen live. Media covering other games turn their attention to updates. (You should have heard the opinions of Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay when he got to see the missed call – this the very day that he had derided umpires on his sports radio Michael Kay Show that afternoon for taking attention off the players and the game) As Gallaraga took his perfect game into the ninth everyone was hoping for great plays. We do not want it to be easy, but we do want to see him succeed. Nobody wants to see a perfect game ruined by a shaky ball four call, or an infielder slipping on the field and creating an error. I am sure that even the umpires are pulling for the guy. They also want to be able to say they were there to see it.
The pitcher and the hitter are who conclude a perfect game and not the umpire. That is what makes Joyce’s mistake so bad and so bad for baseball. Usually home plate umpires start giving close pitches as strikes to pitchers who are on their game and consistent. The first base umpire at Comerica Park that night could make no friends by calling the Cleveland hitter safe and especially when it was not a close play. That is why Joyce wept after the game saying “...I just cost that kid a perfect game...” because he was being a fan too. Honestly I don’t think the most ardent baseball traditionalist would lose if baseball were to overturn this result to give Gallaraga back his perfecto. The league and its present commissioner Bud Selig however stand by the advice of their competition advisors and say the result will not change. The league is scared that by declaring the obvious which we all really witnessed and calling a duck a duck will open the door to naming everything that sounds like a duck also a duck. They think that correcting this mistake only will open a “can of worms” that will allow for re-decisions on all kinds of other close calls or obvious missed calls. They also have been resisting the use of replay because it would be time consuming to institute and games are already too long now. These are two separate issues, but the commissioner of baseball also has the wide reaching authority to apply special circumstances and change anything if it’s in the better interest of the sport. With all the interest in this perfect game how can recognizing Gallaraga’s perfect game NOT BE in the better interest of baseball? How can it not be in the best interest of all the fans, the umpires, and the accuracy of that record book which the league already toyed with twenty years ago? Mr. Bud Selig – you prolonged and then suspended a World Series game two October’s ago in inclement weather when one team had a lead after five innings because you did not want a clinching game decided in under nine innings! Best interest of baseball, yes! One of your predecessors Bowie Kuhn actually replayed the last few innings of a game between the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals after an umpire cancelled George Brett’s home run because too much pine tar was on his bat. Best interest of baseball, yes again! Official scorers are allowed to change hits into errors and change score sheets for up to 24 hours after a game ends. They do it all the time! They may even look at replay to do so – and that is also in baseball’s best interest to be accurate. Changing the final out call when it would be the final play of the game regardless – no other players reached base or scored – hardly is precedent setting. The point is that overturning this particular safe or out call in no way affects the outcome of the game, or the league standings, or the Cy Young race, or the batting race. It does not open any cans of worms because the commissioner can say he is doing it to reflect correctly the actual result in the record books. Only twenty players in the 150 year history of the majors have done what Gallaraga did on June 2, 2010. He deserves his name added to that list. He deserves it maybe more than some of those guys, and his fielders and team deserve to say they were a part of it. If it was a missed call in the sixth inning it would be a non-issue. Even if it was a perfect game in the fifth inning and the call was missed there is no way of telling if the pitcher would play different under pressure in the late innings with one hit against as opposed to none. The fact is nobody would put much significance in it and Gallaraga was actually perfect through 27 batters when the game should have been finished. If baseball would decide to declare him perfect there are no victims in this. The Cleveland Indians would not stand up and object to this. It would save the umpire a few regrets. By not doing it you might as well call the color yellow blue and the color red green. It’s not like we are asking to have the game replayed. As for replay, there has been this notion for ten years that adding video review to any sport would have to mean stopping play and the officials going into some box to watch it. Video is already very standard at all sports events. It’s getting more sophisticated. I would have no problem if video did not zoom in at every angle and always be in high definition like football and hockey. In baseball most missed calls are already noted on television with the angles they already have. It’s simple to follow – the ball pitch, hit, catch, throw and slide are seldom concurrent activities. Video reference should not be about reviewing split second calls anyway. It should be about correcting the ones that are obviously questionable. If you know 1000 miles away by looking at TV monitor that its way off then get it right. If you have to squint to see if it should be reversed then forget it and play on. Regular review of plays at the plate, first base, home runs, outfield traps, and stolen bases is already happening on our TV. If we look at it once and it looks wrong – wrong, not just close – just stop and confirm. The umpires shouldn’t even be the ones doing it. Let a video judge make the call and radio in an earpiece the change to the field crew. It would take no time. Make up for it by banning managers and players from going to umpires to question calls. That is the biggest waste of time, because umpires never actually change their decisions. This is really no big deal. We were very impressed with how quickly home runs were available to video review a week after New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez had a home run go unnoticed by umps two seasons ago. So baseball can work fast when it wants to. No part of the game is beyond adjusting, it’s only the gutless people managing baseball that won’t make the adjustments. When the entire world is discussing it and saying its wrong they should fix it. Joyce made a mistake and was man enough to gain our respect by apologizing and making reference to how badly he kicked the call. It is rare that an umpire ever acknowledge a mistake so kudos to him. Gallaraga and Tiger’s manager Jim Leyland were gracious enough to forgive Joyce and move on to save the umpire further embarrassment. While Selig and the whiz kids at MLB do nothing? – Despite the obvious sentiment that they should – when what they could do would be supportive action to players, fans and umpires that could make the most difference. It makes me wonder if the Tigers had taken the usual route of defiance and complaint would they have gotten noticed? Would it have made a difference if fans rioted in the streets? MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann actually suggested that considering the importance of the call Joyce should have broke with tradition and just looked at the video replay board and reversed the call himself. Become a hero instead of being a goat laid out there to the hecklers by his support at MLB. The Tigers and their fans for the most part did do the right thing by moving on to the next game and commending the player. On a great one-hitter – which was a game I never saw. Because the one hitter of Gallaraga is a fictional one – it never really happened and we all have proof. Selig has brought baseball into the twenty first century and forgotten so much tradition along the way I do not see what would be wrong with recognizing reality. The game keeps changing in so far as equipment, the bats, the balls, the schedule, interleague play and even the fields they stand on. Why do we still insist on superhuman umpires that are beyond review or correction? One staunch traditionalist of the game that used to say human error made baseball unique admitted that continuing to support that angle was like locking oneself in a windowless room and covering their ears. Rules do not change when you are cut off from the universe. As baseball is more readily watched and accepted that notion is silly. The difference outside the grandstands of the baseball stadium and inside it is becoming a blur because technology has a way of not letting us miss the obvious. If human errors are to be so glaringly revealed post game in media and on the internet we just can’t lie to ourselves anymore and pretend the calls were correct. The game we see in the ballpark is the same game we have to watch discussed after the game, and we get to watch over and over again. So that is why we can use those heavy adjectives to describe missed calls. They may have been innocent errors before but who could say for sure? Now we all can say it for sure, and I might just add – Jim Joyce really...really...really missed that call.
from the Media Division of OJC-Inc.
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The adjectives used to describe baseball Umpire Jim Joyce’s missed call that denied Armando Gallaraga a perfect game were plenty. 
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