Jim Joyce blew the call that cost Tigers righty Armando Galarraga a perfect game against the Indians. MLB should learn from this mistake and expand instant replay.
Umpire Jim Joyce calls the Indians' Jason Donald safe at first base to break up Detroit's Armando Galarraga's perfect game with two outs in the ninth inning. Replays showed him out. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)The knee-jerk reaction to Wednesday night's debacle in Detroit is that baseball needs to expand instant replay.
The knee-jerk reaction, in this case, is warranted. The only question is, how much replay would be too much?
More on that in a bit. For now, I'm still trying to digest what I watched on SportsTime Ohio oh, I don't know....75 times.
When Indians shortstop Jason Donald rolled a two-out grounder to the right side, I figured Tigers right-hander Armando Galarraga had secured the majors' third perfect game in 2010.
Then I saw first baseman Miguel Cabrera make a backhand play and set himself, which made me wonder if Donald could beat it. But Cabrera made a strong throw on target to Galarraga, whose foot was on the bag before Donald hit it.
In real time, I thought it was an out. Close, but an out. So did Galarraga, Cabrera, the rest of the Tigers, no doubt some of the Indians, plenty of fans at Comerica Park and TV viewers.
First-base umpire Jim Joyce, the only one that mattered, disagreed. He seemed to hesitate for a split-second before signaling safe.
End of perfect game, beginning of firestorm.
(Oh, by the way: Ken Griffey Jr., clean slugger in the Steroid Era and future Hall of Famer, retired Wednesday.)
The next batter, Trevor Crowe, made the 27th out. Galarraga pitched a one-hitter and beat the Tribe, 3-0.
Yippee.
What should have been cause for celebration turned understandably nasty as Tiger after Tiger unloaded on Joyce, who needed an escort to the umpires' room. Tigers players and manager Jim Leyland had seen the replays, knew Donald was out and wanted Joyce to hear about it.
I don't blame the Tigers for blowing gaskets -- and, later that night, neither did Joyce. He saw the replay and knew he spit the bit. He said he would have yelled at himself if he were Galarraga. Galarraga showed incredible class on the field and in the clubhouse, declining to hammer Joyce.
I watched "Chuck's Last Call'' on STO after the game in order to continue viewing the replay and to hear what the fans said. As I suspected, several callers defended Joyce, saying the ball had jiggled in Galarraga's glove and that he had not demonstrated complete control until after Donald hit the bag. In the word of Bob Feller: horsemuffins. I did not need Joyce's admission to know those callers were wrong.
One caller said that if the blunder had occurred in the earlier innings, it would not have been a big deal. More silliness. Walk-off homers are walk-off homers for a reason: They end games. This blunder happened with two outs in the ninth inning of a potential perfect game, so it will -- it must -- go down as one of the most infamous calls in regular-season history.
No amount of creative viewing or rationalizing is going to change the reality.
Joyce is a veteran umpire with a good reputation. He has worked plenty of big games and come through relatively unscathed. By all accounts, he is a nice man.
That being said, I don't necessarily feel sorry for Joyce, as I would for the youngster who drops a double-decker ice cream on the floor in 95-degree heat. Joyce gets paid good money to get calls correct -- and this was a basic call. He flat missed it. When a fielder misplays a grounder to end a World Series game, he's not pitied. He's fixed with goat horns.
Joyce knew something like this could happen when he set out to be a major-league umpire. (OK, maybe he didn't envision something quite this big.) Umpires know the oven can get really hot if a call is blown for all the world to see. It is why some of us never pursued umpiring beyond Pony League; we don't have the stomach for the intense backlash.
Galarraga, of course, is the guy who deserves the sympathy. He should be in the books for the perfect game he threw on June 2, 2010.
Major League Baseball can't do anything to change that outcome, but it can use what happened to improve the game going forward.
Hopefully, the "Galarraga Rule'' will be enacted ASAP to ensure something along this line doesn't occur again. At the very least, the postseason needs to be better protected from the obvious, game-altering blown call. Let the imperfect Joyce be the catalyst to build on replay already in place.
Please, purists, spare me the "human element'' argument so often advanced in baseball. Are mistakes going to be made by all parties in all sports? Yes. But they don't need to be accepted blindly, as "part of the game.'' Not in the 21st century. If the technology is there to fix mistakes, give it a chance.
Put it this way: Do you think Joyce wishes replay were allowed to reverse his call?
The only question is, how much replay would be too much?
From where I sit, the only things off-limits for review are ball/strike calls. Not that umpires never miss them; ask Eddie Murray about Joe Brinkman in the 1995 World Series. The QuesTec/laser technology is there to give it a shot, but the games would last forever based on all the borderline pitches thrown in a few hours.
My knee-jerk suggestion is, MLB needs to swallow its pride, take a page from the NFL and give the managers challenge flags. Each manager gets two per game to challenge any combination of out/safe calls at the bases and plate; players touching bases and tag-ups; shoestring catches; and fair/foul calls.
On-field umpires huddle in front of the TV, as they do now for boundary calls. They consult with a booth umpire, who makes the final decision.
Addendum: If all challenge flags are used up by the time there are two outs in the ninth of a perfect game, and the umpire blows the call on what should be the 27th out, the pitcher gets to challenge.
I welcome your input. So, too, should MLB. Because perfect games should not be permitted to go poof like this one did.