Not a slow news day on the diamond yesterday. Everyone knows about the blown call in Detroit that cost Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game. Meanwhile, in Seattle, it sure looked to me as if my Twins were robbed when, in the bottom of the tenth, an umpire ruled a Seattle baserunner safe on an attempted force out at second base. It would have been the third out of the inning. Instead, the winning run scored from second as the Twins' shortstop, J.J. Hardy, stretched toward the outfield to receive the flip from Matt Tolbert and was left in no position to throw home as the umpire made the safe sign.
The call in Detroit had no effect on which team won the game, but it's getting much more attention. There has been a lot of talk about people not being perfect, pitchers and umpires both included, and the good behavior exhibited by the principals has been praised by everyone. Jim Joyce, the umpire, owned up to the mistake, and Galarraga graciously accepted his plainly heartfelt apology. Check, check, check. But did you see the play? It wasn't very close, and the question therefore arises: How is it that Joyce, by all accounts a good umpire, got it wrong? He wouldn't have a reputation for competence if he blew many calls on plays no closer than that one.
There have been enough perfect games, spread more or less evenly over baseball's long history, so that most of them are no longer very well remembered. I know that Catfish Hunter pitched one, because it was against my Twins, but I bet that you didn't know that, even if you are a fan. It seems to be a half-freakish event, the result of a god's passing smile as much as a pitching achievement. Dallas Braden is not by a long shot the only pitcher with a perfect game who is not a candidate for the Hall of Fame. The most famous perfect game in baseball history is in this respect representative. It belongs to Don Larsen, of the Yankees, an otherwise unknown toiler who was perfect in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. The final out was recorded when home plate umpire Babe Pinelli rang up Brooklyn pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell on a pitch that most eyewitnesses agree was both high and outside.
Is it possible that Pinelli, caught up in the moment, expanded the strike zone? I'm not casting aspersions. It's just a fact that a perfect game, though it belongs to a pitcher once completed, puts a lot of pressure on other participants, especially in the late innings, the fielders of course but perhaps no one more than the man calling balls and strikes. And stress can affect perception and judgment. Pinelli's ordeal ended with a dubious "strike three" that hardly anyone remembers. I think it's possible that Joyce, setting his mind against the tendency to bring the thing to a successful conclusion, made the opposite mistake. He wanted the guy to be out, the game over, the perfect game achieved, and so couldn't see that what he wished for happened. The guy was out.
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