Last Updated on: 22nd August 2013, 11:55 am
How much must it suck to be Jim Joyce right now? I wonder if he’s woken up to his first death threat yet. In fact, I wonder if he’s gone to sleep at all. I can’t imagine how it must feel to know that you blew a call and ruined an historic moment for a guy who did everything right, and what it must feel like to know that you’ll never live it down and always be known as the guy whofucked Armando Galarraga out of his perfect game.What I do know is that if I’m him, I’m most definitely not looking forward to the next time I’m assigned to work a series in Detroit.
I know a lot of people are shitting on him for what happened and it was indeed a bad call, but I’ve got to say I respect the guy for owning his mistake and wasting no time apologizing to Galarraga and anybody else who would listen. it doesn’t fix things, but it’s nice to see it happen. Too often in all walks of life people don’t get out in front of their mistakes and only admit wrongdoing when the backlash becomes too much to handle. Jim Joyce is by no means a bad umpire, and it’s a shame thatthis inning of workwill almost certainly wind up being his career defining moment.
I’m not sure what if any process exists for getting something like this overturned, but if ever baseball needed one, now’s the time. Joyce knows he messed up and freely admits it. Everybody who saw it knows it was the wrong call. Erasing the last Cleveland hitter doesn’t change the result of the game,the tigers still won 3-0. Galarraga deserves his perfect game, and it makes the sport of baseball look really bad if he doesn’t get it. I don’t want to go so far as to say that baseball needs to adopt full blown instant replay, but to me things like this are exactly what the video review system is meant for. Here’s hoping that MLB does the right thing. It’s a faint hope, but I’ve been wrong before.