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.

Away from the batting cages, McGwire’s team is producing — check that, reproducing — way above the league average.

Big Mac and wife Stephanie McGwire hit a triple on Tuesday, giving birth to three girls.

– David Brown, Big League Stew.

Remember my Army of Mark McGwires scenario? Looks as though the McGwires themselves are doing their very best to realize it.

Granted, you may balk and point out that Stephanie McGwire gave birth to three female McGwires, but I am certain that any McGwire progeny, regardless of gender, will develop the capacity to crush monstrous home runs and play terrible defense. And I’d guess they’ll probably end up sporting some bushy red goatees, too. Sorry, girls. Here’s hoping for your sake you got your mom’s looks, but I assume your father’s DNA is overwhelmingly powerful and dominant.

The good news is that since Mark McGwire already had three children, the McGwires are now just one more set of triplets away from being able to field a full nine. Since, in the original scenario, the McGwires were interchangeable, Team McGwire would not have to worry about a bullpen or pitching rotation. They will simply rotate which McGwire pitches to make sure all the McGwires stay healthy enough to smash epic dingers.

So, the Ports are staging a Salute to the Beatles Night on Saturday with a fireworks finale….

In truly hip style, the players will wear colorfully psychedelic, peace-and-love era uniform tops….

“We haven’t done the Beatles before,” said Elaine Jastineau of OT Sports, the Burlington, N.C., company where Adam McCauley designed the handcrafted double-knit jerseys. “We’ve done ‘Star Wars’ nights, Led Zeppelin, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and tuxedo tops when a couple got married at the ballpark. We just Google some album-cover stuff, throw it together on the jersey, sometimes tweak it a bit and go from there. To me, it looks very ’70s-ish. The clothes people wore back then had a lot of wild, patterned, flowered stuff.”

– Tony Sauro, Recordnet.com.

LSD not included, presumably. There’s a lot of good Minor League baseball-y stuff in that article so it’s probably worth checking out, but here’s what the jerseys look like if you don’t:

Yikes. Not sure if they’re planning on printing names on the top, but if I were a Stockton Port I’d definitely attempt to change my last name to “Mustard” for the day.

Hat tip to Baseball Think Factory for the link.

The Marlins recalled the 27-year-old left-hander from Triple-A New Orleans on Thursday, and he was in a big league uniform for the first time since July 2008.

A change from then to now is his handlebar mustache. The Marlins have a facial hair policy. Goatees and ‘staches are allowed, if they are well groomed.

– Joe Frisaro, MLB.com.

Kudos to the Marlins for having a facial-hair policy that recognizes greatness. Also, if their facial hair policy allows goatees and mustaches, what’s out of the question? Ungroomed (and disgusting) Ryan Franklin numbers? Classic Casey Blake beards?

Anyway, here’s the new and improved Taylor Tankersley. Now he’s “that reliever with the awesome handlebar mustache” and not just “that guy whose last name kind of sounds like Eckersley” anymore. I don’t know if he really has the face for this type of mustache, but respect the man for trying:

Before the season, I told Scott and Ted at Rockiescast (hey, look! It’s TedQuarters Giants insider Dailey McDailey) that Ubaldo Jimenez was my “sleeper” choice to win the NL Cy Young Award. I’m not sure why I would deem him a sleeper coming off an excellent season and pitching in front of what looked to be one of the best offenses in the National League.

After shutting down the Diamondbacks for eight innings last night, the Rockies’ ace can now boast a 9-1 record with a 0.88 ERA. He has thrown at least six innings in each of his starts and averaged over seven innings per start. He has yet to allow more than two runs in any start.

Jimenez almost certainly won’t finish the season with a sub-1.00 ERA. That’s ridiculous. And there’s some reason to believe he has been a little bit lucky this season, pitching to only a .226 batting average in balls on play, well lower than his .286 career line. But batters don’t often get hits off Jimenez because they don’t often hit the ball hard: He has yielded only a 14.4 percent line-drive rate and induced 54 percent groundballs.

He does that by throwing exceptionally fast. Jimenez’s average fastball comes in at 96.8 miles an hour, the hardest in baseball and 1.2 MPH faster than the next closest guys. In the ninth inning of his no-hitter against the Braves last month, he was still throwing 98 MPH fastballs with sharp sink despite being about 120 pitches deep. He mixes in a great changeup and some breaking stuff to dominate big-league hitters.

Jimenez may not be the best pitcher in baseball, but he’s close. And thanks mostly to his insane velocity, he is undoubtedly among the most exciting to watch. Oh, and he’s only 26 years old.

It’s a great time for young pitching in the NL West. Jimenez, Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw should combine for a slew of Cy Youngs by the time they’re through, and there’s a bunch of guys just a notch below. It makes for good baseball and something awesome to watch when the Mets have got you too upset or too excited to go to sleep.

Nearly three years after he began cooperating with Jeff Novitzky’s federal probe of steroids in baseball, Brian McNamee testified before the grand jury investigating McNamee’s former client, Roger Clemens, for perjury.

McNamee, his hair long and his necktie emblazoned with the logo of a friend’s nutritional supplement company, arrived at the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse flanked by his New York attorneys, Richard Emery and Earl Ward.

– Teri Thompson and Nate Vinton, N.Y. Daily News.

That’s right, folks, you can now buy ad space on Brian McNamee’s tie. Look:

OK, first off: Kudos to McNamee, I guess, for coming up with a genius new money-making scheme, now that the steroids business is all dried up.

But who at the supplement company thought it would be a good idea to associate the business with a guy who is in court to detail how he distributed illegal substances? I mean, I know in some communities selling steroids is a pretty righteous thing to do, and if you talk to the right weightlifter he’ll chew your ear off about how they’re not really that dangerous if you use them right and all that, and then for some reason get really, really angry when you insinuate that he might have small testicles.

Still, shouldn’t a supplement company selling legal products want to go out of its way to distinguish them from the illicit ones? I guess McNamee is friends with ANC’s owner, and clearly this was a good way to get his brand plastered all over the AP photo wire. Maybe all press is good press in the supplement industry. I just don’t think I want to buy anything Brian McNamee’s selling. Certainly not while he’s rocking that mullet.

Andre Dawson played center field, John Fogerty sang “Centerfield,” and in an unusual twist, both will be honored at the baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony July 25….

Noting he was born in California before baseball expanded west, Fogerty said his first team was the Yankees, but that he now roots for the Oakland A’s. His recording of “Centerfield” has been played at the Cooperstown induction for more than a decade.

– David Hinckley, N.Y. Daily News.

Well that’s cool, I suppose. Granted, “Centerfield” is a pretty cheesy tune, and I could probably name a few… wait a minute, CALIFORNIA!? Fogerty, no! I can’t believe I’ve been misled all this time.