So I feel like I should weigh in on Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game last night, not because you care or you haven’t read 1,000 other opinions about it already, but just to acknowledge a story that seems to have taken hold of the entire sporting world.
I’ve got no great insight, though. Here’s my take: That sucked. Sucked for Galarraga and it sucked for Joyce. It sucked for the Tigers and their fans, and now it kind of sucks for the commissioner’s office to have to come up with some response.
The guy screwed up. It happens. Sometimes no one notices, sometimes everyone does. He didn’t do it intentionally and by most accounts he’s a very good umpire.
I don’t think the league should overturn the call and award Galarraga a perfect game because that opens up a whole weird can of worms involving every other obviously blown call in the past and the future. I do hope it leads to a discussion about a reasonable way to further implement instant replay in games without slowing them down too much, because if we have the technology we might as well use it to make the games as fair as possible.
That’s all I got.
Tedquarters 
Even weirder is the suggestion that I have seen a few times this morning that maybe the hit should be scored an error so Galarraga gets a no-hitter instead. That’s the dumbest of all possible outcomes, in my opinion, because it resorts to an absolute fiction to create something that is lesser in any event.
I sort of like the way things as they stand. Galarraga and Joyce (nice ‘tache, by the by) are forever the faces of imperfect perfection, and MLB has to face up to yet another high-profile instance of why it needs some form of replay. Sucks for Galarraga, sure, but I am kind of a fan of the ending as it stands.
Totally agree on the need for replay but without slowing the game down too much. What do you think about this solution:
Given that umpires will likely object to more replay — because Jim Joyce notwithstanding they don’t like to admit they make mistakes — isn’t the solution simply adding another umpire to each crew, have the umpire sit in the photobox next to the home team dugout, and watch the game on tv. If he sees something fishy, he says something.
Umps should be happy because they add 16 new jobs at the MLB level. And it seems like the fastest way to solve disputes. The problem with the current system where the umpires leave the field is the time it takes for the umps to conference and actually walk off the field. Add a 5th umpire and eliminate that time.
The only remaining question is what calls are reviewable. Not sure what the answer is. But certainly close plays at 1st base seem to be a must.
That makes sense. Alternately, Tom Boorstein and I were just discussing the idea of planting a single umpire in MLB.com headquarters, where he’d have access to all the game feeds in high definition and could be quickly consulted for any video reviews. There’s no need to have the whole crew leave the field, as they currently do — it’s ridiculous. And yeah, they’d have to come up with a reasonable list of reviewable calls, as they have in the NFL.
Good idea. And cheaper for the notoriously cheap MLB. You could also give each crew chief a pager (blackberry, iphone, whatever). If the light blinks or the thing vibrates or whatever, the crew chief stops the game and waits until the ump in the office tells him what the right call is.
I like the idea of pagers, because do they still make pagers? It’d be a great way to make umpires look more like mid-90s drug dealers.
Agreed. I used pages because the idea of a pager is pretty funny. “Skypager” made an appearance on my ipod this morning and realized that I was getting old. Still a good song though.
This is what they do in the NHL. They have a crew of guys in Toronto, aka “The War Room,” and they basically have all the camera angles for all the games. Whenever they need to review a goal the ref gets on the phone and they review it.
Adding, this article might be the dumbest thing I have read on this topic
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/03/the-greatness-and-perfection-of-missing-the-call.html
I had the same idea of an additional ump at each game. If an ump is hurt, sick, or whatever the case may be, you can just stick him in front of the tv. This also provides an extra ump on each crew in case one gets hurt during a game and needs to leave. It won’t slow things down much. When you watch a game on tv at home, after a close play they give you multiple angles within 45 seconds of the play and you can make the right call, so why can’t they do this at the ballpark?
In my opinion, one of the worst things to come out of this whole ordeal is that the controversy is overshadowing the retirement of one of the greatest players (and sweetest swings) to ever play the game.
Omir Santos retired?!?!?
I said “one of” the greatest, not “the greatest”.
Armando Gallaraga pitched a perfect game. Its as simple as that.
The problem with additional umpires is that they will still get call wrong. During the playoffs they use 6 umpires and calls are still missed. I remember last year in the Yankees Twins divisional series a ball down the line was called foul even though it was fair by 3-4 feet. The umpire on the left field line missed the call. The best solution would be to hold umpires accountable and fire the bad ones (I’m looking at you Angel Hernandez).
I would think umpires would be in favor of some sort of replay because I feel like it almost takes them off the hook on crucial calls. Jim Joyce probably wishes there was replay of the play last night.
If they did implement it on judgement calls, I’d have to say it would have to be severly limited, maybe something like the NFL where each team only gets one or 2 ‘challenges’ per game, or something like college football where someone is watching every single play on TV and only buzzes down to stop the game if a close play needs to be re-looked at.
I’m torn on this, I like the human element and the fact that there is no replay to slow things down, but in this day and age of technology where the fans at home are seeing every play in slow mo from 5 different angles, I think its almost unfair to the umpires at this point to not allow the use of replay in some capacity. They will never get everything right, its impossible, these days every fan knows what call was right or wrong which just makes it that much harder on the ump. Heck with the new ballparks, the fans in the place watching live even have access to TV and know wether the calls were right.
Agreed wholeheartedly on the last point. If we didn’t have video replay on TV, everyone probably would have said, OK, Joyce’s call looked bad, but it was close and he was standing right there, so maybe he was right. Now that we have the ability to know for sure he’s wrong, we might as well extend that ability to him.
Exactly, these guys are being judged on a daily basis by millions of fans and media, who all have the luxury of reviewing the calls on instant replay and slow mo, while the umps dont. Thats basically an impossible standard to hold these guys too.
People always speak of how bad the umpires have gotten, but some of that is likely just the advances in replays, # of angles available, and HD TVs. We just see and can confirm to ourselves the bad calls for sure now, when in the past we had know way of knowing.
I think Selig should have overruled and put the perfect game on the books. He would have to narrow the situation–if it’s the ninth inning and affects a no hitter or perfect game, then we’ll consider it, etc.
Galarraga deserved the perfect game and I don’t think anyone involved in the game would’ve complained if Selig made the move.
Yes, the can of worms would be opened, but it seems inevitable that baseball will have to expand replay. If they do, most controversy would be handled via the replay, so you wouldn’t have many situations that call for the commissioner to take action.
I can’t help but suspect that Galarraga will have a more lasting legacy the way things actually turned out than if he had actually gotten credit for a perfect game. He’ll always be THAT GUY.
I’m with you. I think — especially considering the way he handled it — he’ll be remembered as a class act and deserving perfect game-thrower for the rest of his career and beyond.