The Imperfect Perfect Game

It is indisputable that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s [non]decision to leave Umpire Jim Joyce’s bad call on June 2nd’s game between the Detroit and Cleveland does not accurately reflect the truth. But it may accurately reflect history. And Life.

My father-in-law was a very tough and successful business leader. And when it comes to the sacred game of baseball, he treats it with the same seriousness and intensity he did his career.

When he and I discussed the following subject in June, it quickly became clear he would not do what I have even contemplated here. I have waited three months now to cool my mind off on this subject, to see if perhaps I might have changed my mind. I have, sort of – but with less conviction than I ought to have.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010, Comerica Park, Detroit.

As the last play of the game unfolded, things moved fast.

Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga raced for First base and as he touched the bag took a short in-field throw from his second baseman. He beat Cleveland’s hitter, Jason Donald, but Joyce called him safe.

Perhaps things happened too fast for Joyce to clearly see it, or perhaps the close proximity of the two opposing players reaching First almost together combined with might have seemed to be a lack of ball control on Galarraga’s part (this was not debated long if at all, and the video evidence shows Galarraga had no problem with the catch), his view-angle, or as some have speculated, he was not entirely alert, or whatever it might have been; so that in that brief instant when all possible factors came together, he made an inaccurate call: the runner was declared safe, and Galarraga’s history-making perfect game – what would have been the 20th in all of professional baseball – fell out of the record book before it even had glue on it.

This seemed, at least on the surface, to be a pretty simple issue. The umpire’s call was wrong – and he said so, which has been the crux of all the drama – he admitted he was wrong, and later elaborated very emotionally over it, even shedding tears. Bud Selig stated the day after the game, “There is no dispute that last night’s game should have ended differently.”

All questionable issues were resolved after the game, except whether or not the call would be reversed.

Clear cut, right? So what’s the problem? Only about a hundred years of history and one floodgate. Apparently such rulings are not only not taken lightly; they’re not taken at all.

So, therein lies the problem. Is justice to be done to Galarraga’s game, in fact his career, or is justice to be done to precedent, the history and traditions of baseball and posterity? The truth is this game may be (and probably will be) remembered at least as one of the most memorable and frustrating moments in all of baseball. But it will be remembered.

But will it – or will the game, or Armando Galarraga, or the Tigers, or Jim Joyce for that matter – really be remembered forever? How many of us know that in fact 50 “perfect games” were, from an article by The Associated Press, were deemed not so… “[i]n 1991, [when] a panel headed by then-commissioner Fay Vincent took a look at the record book and decided to throw out 50 no-hitters for various reasons. None of them, however, involved changing calls made on the field.”

The truth is also that this is a more complicated problem than what first meets the eye, and Baseball has wrestled with it many times before. While this instance may be the first regarding an on-field call, it is not new. It certainly resolves to be an imperfect solution, leaving the human mistake element in place as an integral and honored – even sacred? – part of our National Pastime. Perhaps the allowance of this imperfect element is what makes baseball a more perfect game. I am still undecided.

If Mr. Selig were to reverse the call would all of baseball history be thwarted and cheapened? Would our Sacred Game be lessened? Would the floodgate of compromise be opened to allow the destruction of the highest principles of baseball? Perhaps this level of strict rule and precedence and adherence to tradition would be better exercised when considering those who purposefully disgrace the game by cheating and lying. In stark contrast, Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce both demonstrated the noblest of virtues in their athletic contest: they were good sports. They played the game well, with competence. They played fairly and honestly, and with class.

Mr. Selig has what seems to amount to the power of life and death in his hands. In this case, I’d be pretty happy to see him grant life. What a story of triumph of the good and just, the celebration of what is right and deserved, and the just reward for the deserving. Maybe just this once? (…And it’s not as though it would not be justified.) And to acknowledge the facts and give them their proper place in history.
Now that would be perfect…
…or would it?

My Personal Epilogue

Amongst the other professional and quasi-professional things I do, including pontification-writing, I like to play baseball, and played as a kid growing up in west-central Indiana.

During our regular non-game hitting and catching sessions at “Conaty’s Field” in my neighborhood, I would often frustrate my friends in the outfield by pointing to the side of the field opposite of where the defenders were anxiously planning to catch my high fly-ball, then toss the ball in the air and hit it to the spot I had pointed to, making them run like the dickens across the field to get it. (Did they not believe me?) Back and forth, left field, right field, I jerked them, until my turn was up. One of my favorite baseball exploits. The effect of this moderate talent was enhanced when I would exercise my self-taught ability to switch hit. I would, without warning jump to the right side of Home Plate, and after switching the ball to my right hand and tossing it into the air, I would swing left-handed and hit a pretty decent ball.

As it turned out, I only played organized baseball – Little League – for part of one season because my folks pulled me out after too many games at which some adults at the games screamed and cussed long and hard and without reservation. It was abruptly determined we would not be a part of that.

That was effectively the end of my “real” baseball career with the exception of playing softball in the YMCA league a couple of years. I did not play organized hardball again until high school. In the intervening years, however, I nursed and grew my romantic longings for the game by playing pick-up games with friends and by subscribing to Baseball Digest. The focal point of my reading that periodical was the Baseball Rules Corner, where my knowledge of the more technical aspects of the game would be challenged. It was here that I learned the word and meaning of balk, still one of the strangest words I know.
When I finally decided to play on the high school team as a sophomore, I had a rude and somewhat embarrassing eye opener: I had never hit – or even swung at – a ball going that fast. I had a tough time of it.

As it turned out, our season ended just as abruptly as my Little League career. The wheels had already been turning for quite some time to close my school. It was a laboratory school, part of Indiana State University. Its name was in fact The Laboratory School, or “State High”, referring specifically to the secondary side. We were the State High Young Sycamores (trees one day, Indians the next; no one was ever quite sure. It depended largely on whom you asked. Adding to the schizophrenia, State High and ISU utilized both as mascots and logos).

But in a world of public schools, it had become a dinosaur. This school was in fact a combined primary and secondary school, and up until then, true to its original purpose, provided actual classrooms for education students at the university; in its earliest days named Indiana State Teacher’s College.

One of the unintended consequences of this winding down was the demise of most of the organized activities during that last spring semester of life of the school. This included, it seemed, last vestiges of “umph” that remained in anyone’s motivation to initiate and follow through on anything, and least of all a poorly coached, slovenly uniformed, little experienced team.

Long before, the school baseball uniforms had gone away with nostalgic graduating seniors who knew what was coming and other such collectors. As a result, we received a donation of oversized, wool uniforms from the actual Sycamores of ISU. The uniforms were, according to the archival photos lining the walls of the college’s main athletic department building, from the 1965-69 seasons.

Better than nothing, but they were huge – baggy, obviously old and noticeably worn. They made a pretty poor first impression. So, with about five lost games under our belts, the team, the season, and the school folded in one sad clump.

In retrospect, I wish I still had mine. As a matter of fact, we were given our uniforms to keep as the school was closing. (I too, was told I could have mine, and I took it – just to see it lost to some unknown place in time, space, and distance, including that transition from high school to college, when life changes so rapidly it’s a wonder you live through it let alone come out on the other side as a sort of adult with all the clothes you started with.) It became a sort of free-for-all with regard to certain things; objects that could easily be claimed and hauled away. Old school logo t-shirts, gym trunks, and sweatshirts were also handed out or simply claimed as they were found. Why not? It was all suddenly being relegated to the dustbin and trash heap of history anyway.

(And by the way, I wonder whatever happened to all those nude portraits and other less interesting still-lifes hanging exotic and dusty all around Mr. Laska’s art room, created in the ‘60’s and early ’70’s by those eclectic, mysterious and cool upperclassmen?)

Our last game – and my last real, formal baseball game in a uniform, was played at Shakamak High School on a cool, sunny day in late May of 1978. An odd and anti-climactic end to an almost-experience. We got beat pretty badly, and we felt very down, not just about that, but about the whole thing. It seemed pretty miserable to lose not only the game, but our school. The Lakers were magnanimous and friendly about the whole thing.

So, we went home, and that was it.

Now these many years later, I have a father-in-law whose favorite sport is baseball. As a result, we occasionally end up in conversations about the game. He is far more current and frankly more interested in the details of any given season of MLB, including the statistics of players and team standings, but I have been pleasantly surprised I can hang with him even as long as I do. It goes especially well when we get in to the nostalgic and philosophical aspects of baseball.

But much more significantly, I am once again playing – casually – with my nine-year-old son. Usually just the two of us, we’ll go out into our front yard, and he’ll hit balls for an hour. He isn’t yet much interested in catching, something he’ll have to get over soon. But he’s a good hitter, and that’s fun. I get quite a workout going after his line drives. Once in a while we go up to the neighborhood diamond before school and hit balls – what a great way to start our day….and…it’s one of the most sure-fire ways to make my wife ooze sentimentality for the next three days.

In light of this aspect of my life now, I see more clearly that this is what is lasting beyond more temporal things: It’s not really baseball. It’s what happens between us when we play the game together. While Galarraga just might have had taken away from him his one and only “perfect game” in life, there is more to life than a perfect game. There’s more to life than any one bad call.

And so we see that we’re not really talking so much about baseball anymore. And that’s what makes this imperfect life “perfect”.

Now that’s perfect.

(Photo credits: Paul Sancya / Associated Press, Gene J. Puskar / Associated Press, Indiana State University Baseball archives, Paul Sancya / Associated Press respectively)