Joyce had it right!

Wowwww. In my last post I complained that everyone had thrown Jim Joyce under the bus when he made an understandable mistake in the near-perfect game of Armando Galarraga. But this evening, for the first time, I saw the replay from the right angle in real time. Most of the real-time replays have obscured Galarraga's mitt behind his body. And the slow-motion shots that showed him snow-coning the ball also made it look as though he'd held it long enough for it to be an out. But watching it in real time, I now think it was a good old-fashioned bobble. Runner safe!

Maybe that's just me. But it's honestly what it looked like to me, and it absolutely deserved discussion. We didn't get that. In their haste to jump on the bandwagon, the baseball media seems not to want to discuss it. Could they at least have considered the issue, and allowed viewers to decide for themselves whether it was or wasn't a bobble? Nope. They continue to pretend that it never existed.

And I think this explains why Galarraga didn't argue, not his purported good nature. He was aware he'd bobbled it. But he, like everyone else, was content to let Joyce be demonized. Everyone is acting like Galarraga is nobility personified. But now I think just the opposite.

Wow.

Imperfect

We're not a third of the way through it, and this season has already seen two perfect games, one each by Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay. There have only ever been 20 perfect games in baseball history, and never two in one season. Ubaldo Jimenez' regular old no-hitter is an afterthought by comparison.

But things got weirder last night. Armando Galarraga, freshly returned from the minors after a lousy season last year, was throwing what coulda/woulda/shoulda been the third perfect game of 2010. Only umpire Jim Joyce thought otherwise. With two out in the ninth inning, the first baseman went to his right to make a play on a ground ball, and threw back to Galarraga, who collected it and touched first with a grin to complete the perfect game!

Only not.

Jim Joyce called the runner safe, even though the replay clearly showed that he was out. The Tigers were horrified, the announcers were horrified, all of baseball was horrified, and every couch potato like me was horrified. An ump takes a perfect game away from a pitcher? How could he? How could he?

He could, and he did. The only guy who wasn't horrified was Galarraga himself, who remained calm while the rest of his team was losing it. He proceeded to get the next hitter to complete the now one-hit shutout.

Joyce actually apologized to Galaragga for blowing the call (which never happens between umpire and player). Everybody tried to rationalize Joyce's human imperfection, but they certainly haven't let go of it. What not a single announcer has said is that Joyce actually made a perfectly reasonable call. From one angle the result seemed obvious. But from the other, there was room for reasonable doubt. While the replay from the second angle still showed the runner was out, Galaragga had snow-coned the ball (holding it out at the end of his glove), and then snatched it into the middle of his glove after the runner went by. In real time, in which Joyce made the call, it had to look like he had never controlled the ball. In which case Joyce did exactly the right thing. But that doesn't make as good a story.

People are talking about the incident today, and will continue to talk about it for a very long time. But not a peep about the apparent bobble. The press seems content to leave Joyce hanging out to dry. Everyone seems to agree that Jim Joyce is a fine umpire, but this is what he will be remembered for. It will haunt him and cast a shadow over his time in baseball.

Pretty good call, Jim. It's just a damn shame for Armando, and a bigger shame for you that it turned out not to be right.