Perfectly Imperfect

So I hear there was a pretty big blown call last night? By now everyone has heard about Armando Galarraga's imperfect game, and the blown call by Umpire Jim Joyce. There will be howls from many quarters about instant replay, people who want MLB to award him the perfect game anyway and conspiracy theories by fan-boys across the globe.

First off instant replay, to this I say hell no. The powers that be are already trying to speed up the sport, and instant replay obviously kills that notion. Human error has always been part of the game, whether that be fielders, batters, or umpires. Baseball, and sports in general, are said to be a microcosm of society, and that assessment is 100% true. Life is not fair, it is filled with errors and most people don't get an instant replay to decide if they were right or wrong. Instant replay effs with the core essence of baseball, and it's not fool proof by any stretch.

Awarding a perfect game is the exact wrong move to make. It will start us down a very slippery slope with this sort of thing. Again it's an imperfect world, do you really want to open the umpires up to having all their calls overturned because something may be historical? Is this blown call worse than Randy Marsh squeezing the Pirates pitchers in 92? Not to Pirates fans. Should the MLB have gone through and nitpicked his calls? Nope.

I'm not even going to get into people saying he blew it on purpose or other such frivolous idiocy, the fact of the matter is Jim Joyce should be applauded for what he did. An umpire is told to "call em' like he sees em'", and he did. People make a lot out of umpires and referees in all sports making themselves part of the game, now they expect an umpire to call a guy safe when the umpire thought he was out? That would be Jim Joyce making himself part of the game. Jim Joyce did everything he was supposed to do, he just made the wrong call, something that he, and every umpire, will probably do hundreds of times this year.

Joyce has spent his life getting to where he is today, and if he makes the call against what he thinks happened he is making himself part of the game. People want him to make calls depending on the game situation and historical circumstances? That is the exact thing I don't want officials in ANY sport to do.