Jim Joyce

I'm hacked off. Really hacked off. We're now something like 3 1/2 hours removed from the end of the Armando Galarraga game, and I'm still hacked off. And the thing about it is, my frustration is not justified by any long-standing personal affinity for the Tigers or Armando Galarraga. I'm just pissed as a pure fan of the game. This is 2010's Don Denkinger moment. In a few respects, it's even worse than Don Denkinger.

For the record, I don't think there's very much to be gained from Bud Selig retroactively deeming this a perfect game. Craig Calcaterra makes a great point when he acknowledges that Selig taking such action would be opening up a veritable Pandora's box, one which would likely be detrimental to baseball on the whole -- if he exercises his right to overturn Joyce's call, then where do you draw the line thereafter when other erroneous calls arise?

I'm as mad as the next guy about what ensued tonight, but to give Galarraga the perfect game now (a) gives him little more than a notation in baseball history, and doesn't bring back any of the jubilation or raw emotion of the moment that renders such rare accomplishments so memorable/special, and (b) sets a dangerous precedent for baseball. So, there's that.

As for instant replay, though ... yeah, this has to be the tipping point, the moment that both galvanizes and crystallizes demand for reform. It simply has to be. I'm tired of people excusing blown calls by referencing the "human element." I don't want make-up calls compensating for other blown calls as a means of "evening things out." Two wrongs don't make a right. I don't care that the current M.O. is how baseball has always done it. I simply want the calls right.

And anybody who presumes to argue that instant replay will slow the game down further should also take note that they could have very easily corrected Joyce's blown call in the 60-90 seconds that passed during Leyland's slow walk to and from the dugout and futile argument. What's the worst-case scenario in the event that, say, three disputable calls arise in a single game? (That would rarely, if ever happen.) Five minutes, tops? Is that really the huge impediment that it's made out to be?

In the game chat earlier, I said some things in the heat of the moment about Joyce which, frankly, I'm not very proud of. His erroneous call was, of course, inexcusable, and I think just about all of us are upset that he got it wrong, but you know what? He was, at least in part, put in this position -- a position where he's probably going to be the object of mockery, scorn and derision, if not outright threats of physical violence, for the remainder of his professional career and perhaps his life -- by Major League Baseball and the WUA.

This isn't a Doug Eddings-type situation where the umpire, against all logical reasoning, obstinately refused to consult replay; rather, this is a situation where essentially he didn't have the tools to help him assure the correct call. Jim Joyce failed Armando Galarraga and baseball tonight, but baseball also failed Galarraga, the Detroit Tigers, Joyce, its fans, and itself.

I wonder if incidents like this and others where the outcome of the game was irreversibly -- and unjustly -- altered by a poor call could have been averted all along if baseball had taken even 1/50th of the resources it expended on the PED witch hunt and instead devoted them towards the improvement of game-officiating.