Perfect Game Blown Call

Until Jim Joyce made his notorious safe sign last night, the poster boy for horrific umpiring at a crucial moment was Don Denkinger. As the ump whose call turned around the 1985 World Series, Denkinger perhaps is the only man who truly understands the anguish Joyce feels today, after costing Detroit's Armando Galarraga a perfect game.

Denkinger wasn't an advocate of replay in 1985, when his blown call at first base in Game 6 sustained the Royals' game-winning rally and set up Kansas City's Series victory. But he believes in replay now.

VOTE: Should MLB reverse Joyce's call?

"There are so many areas you can use instant replay," Denkinger told the New York Post from his Iowa home last night. "Maybe instant replay can clean things up. If a play is missed, it can be corrected. I didn't feel that way in '85, but I feel that way now."

Denkinger know Joyce well, having had him on his crew. "He's a very good umpire," Denkinger said. "I feel badly for the situation." He also knows that Joyce's blown call won't end Denkinger's infamy.

"I had 30 great years," he said, "and I had one call that's all anybody ever wants to talk about. It's not right. But it's the way the game's played, and that's what happens."

What do you say about replay? Is it time to use it for more than home run calls?

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Galarraga Perfect Game

Detroit -- Jim Joyce was like a person at fault in an accident scene, his emotional state chaotic and distraught.

He paced back and forth in the umpire's clubhouse at Comerica Park. His big arms were folded tight, like a straitjacket, against his chest. His face was flushed red. His tongue did its best to chop an umpire into pieces, which is where Joyce's psyche lay minutes after Wednesday night's near-perfect game by Armando Galarraga.

Near-perfect when it was clearly perfect.

"I missed it, I missed it," Joyce barked, his voice at the extreme end of anguished.

"I took a perfect game from that kid who pitched a perfect game.

"It was the biggest call of my career and I kicked the (stuff) out of it.

"I'm sorry. I had a great angle and I missed the call."

It was the kind of call Joyce, 54, who has been one of the game's better umpires for 23 years, has made a thousand times.

Mistakes are brutal. Mistakes that come from an Edgar Allan Poe manuscript are indescribably cruel.

Joyce's imperfect act that ruined a perfect game came with two out in the ninth, after Galarraga had put somehow put away 26 consecutive Cleveland Indians batters. He was ready to put a flourish on history, on a previously unremarkable career that was about to slip into baseball lore, when he got Jason Donald to smack a grounder between first base and second.

Miguel Cabrera snared the ball, waited a split-second to line up Galarraga, who was a few feet from history. Cabrera threw neatly to his soon-to-be celebrity teammate as Galarraga stepped on the bag, a split-second ahead of Donald's foot.

Joyce's hands, palms-down, stretched left and right.

"Safe!"

And at that moment, hellfire descended on Comerica Park's infield. As quickly as television replays confirmed what Joyce's blunder ruined, an umpire's nightmare began.

Galarraga got the final out of a 3-0 Tigers victory and, in an instant, Tigers manager Jim Leyland was breathing fire into Joyce's face, as were Tigers players, who came dangerously close to having a physical confrontation with an umpire whose name was about to know infamy.

"I really thought he beat the ball," Joyce said, speaking of Donald as he continued to pace 5 feet one way, 5 another, over and over, his crew members sitting silently at a nearby table.

"At that time I thought he beat the ball. I asked the guy in the (video) room to cue up the play as soon as we got in here.

"And I missed it from here to that wall."

Joyce had the appearance of a man who had done something far worse than make a mistake in a baseball game. He was inconsolable. He ripped at himself mercilessly. He would not hear about the game being human, about people being fallible.

"I don't blame the Tigers for anything that was said after the game," he said. "If I had been Galarraga, I would have been the first one in my face."

"And he never said a word to me. I don't blame one person for their reaction.

"This wasn't a call," Joyce said, emphasizing the third word. "This was a history call. And I kicked the (stuff) out of it."

Joyce later met with Galarraga, who said, "He feels really bad, probably worse than me. I give a lot of credit to that guy, to say he's sorry. I gave him a hug. His body English said more than the words. Nobody's perfect."

Joyce was asked if he had not come to terms with the perils of a profession where mistakes are displayed on a grand stage. He had to have known about Don Denkinger's grief when Denkinger blew a call that cost the St. Louis Cardinals the 1985 World Series.

"I've never been through anything like this," Joyce said, his voice quivering. "I worked with Don Denkinger, and I know what he went through, but I've ever had a moment like this."

Joyce stopped pacing. He stood for a moment, listening to someone's reminder that far more heartbreaking mistakes are made by other people each day. He turned to head for the shower. And he broke down.

Leyland heard about Joyce's psychological state in the Tigers clubhouse.

"I gotta get over there," the Tigers manager said, heading for the doorway, and for the tunnel leading to the umpire's dressing room.

Leyland returned 15 minutes later.

"He's better now," the manager said, forgiving an umpire who could not forgive himself.
Tigers no-hitters

George Mullin: July 4, 1912 vs. St. Louis (7-0)

Virgil Trucks: May 15, 1952 vs. Washington (1-0)

Virgil Trucks: Aug. 25, 1952 vs. Yankees (1-0)

Jim Bunning: July 20, 1958 vs. Boston (3-0)

Jack Morris: April 7, 1984 vs. White Sox

Justin Verlander: June 12, 2007 vs. Milwaukee

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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.

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