Imperfection

I see about 50 calls per night that are- context removed- just as bad as Jim Joyce ruining Armando Galarraga's perfect game. But, the shop never howled like it did last night. I was too wrapped up in my work to follow the game and didn't realize what the situation was because it was relatively early in the night (the game only took 1:44). When they filled me in, it was OMG-WTF for about 10 minutes. I couldn't work and I was getting pounded with texts.

In this case, it was far worse to take away the perfecto on a bad call than it would have been had he gotten the perfect game by being on the right side of a blown call. In Halliday's, he threw a 3-2 pitch easily 6 inches outside, but the ump rang up the batter and nobody said anything.

Bokolis has said it countelss times; until baseball effectively implements replay, it's just like WWF. My issue is that we have 55-60 year old fat guys- out of position more often than not because they can't be bothered- officiating these games, yet we can't use replay. The replay was on TV in 10 seconds, but we can't equip the umpires with an iPad-like device so that even these old, sausage-handed fuckers could swiftly deal with blown calls.



As can be seen from the picture, Joyce is at an angle where he cannot easily keep ball, bag and runner in his line of sight. This would be more easily accomplished if he were a few steps to his right. This is the problem with having these old farts. After 20 years in the show, Joyce can't be bothered and nobody's going to teach him. He calls what he calls. The post game mea culpa is lip service. To boot, he could have had a plausible out by saying the snow-cone catch by Galarraga didn't constitute possession (the ball took a while to settle after initially hitting in the palm of the glove and, after a short snow-cone, Galarraga released the ball so that he could tuck it away...it would have been flimsy but, in applying some NFL catch-and-contol logic, Joyce would have put it over), but tried to sell us that I-thought-the-runner-beat-it bullshit.

It's not like guys in their 30s and 40s don't blow calls (and aren't cunts about it). The older guys are set in their ways and think they are part of the act. Joe West, because there isn't much he (or C.B Bucknor or Angel Hernandez) won't do to get on TV, got into his own dust-up last night, with the Rays' manager Maddon using West's own rant (on the games taking too long) against him. If they're going to keep y'all old-timers around, y'all had better learn that, if you want to be part of the act, the bar is going to be raised on you.

To his credit, Galarraga didn't say a word. The game ended on the next at bat. Miguel Cabrera spent it lacing into Joyce. Joyce surely must have realized by the tone of Cabrera's vitriol that he royally fucked up.

As for Galarraga, he's left to make lemonade out of this. Maybe he'll be the 21st Century's Ernie Shore, or he'll be at least as famous for having been jerked out a perfecto.