So far as baseball fans go... I'm pretty fickle. Sometime during my teenage years I was given an Orioles baseball jersey and started following the team just so I would know what to say when people wanted to talk about them. When I was in college I caught Red Sox Fever (no idea how or why) and became a fan for decades. Once Boston won The Series in 2004, I became disenchanted and switched to my "home" team, the Seattle Mariners. I watch an occasional game, but find it tough to get excited about baseball anymore.
And yet... it's easy to get excited when something remarkable happens.
Like a perfect game.
A perfect game is a formidable accomplishment that has only happened twenty times in the entire history of major league baseball (and a dozen times in my lifetime). Not only can you not allow the opposing team to get any hits... but there can't be any walks or hit-batters either. That's tough.
Last night the Detroit Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians and Detroit's Armando Galarraga was pitching the game of his career. The PERFECT game of his career. And then it happened. A bad call declared a runner safe when he was very obviously out. Instant replay confirmed it. Even the umpire who blew the call fully admitted that he made a mistake. Galarraga got robbed of his history-making perfect game.
As a casual fan, I really don't have cause to complain... but...
This is so fucking stupid.
Everybody is saying "Well, bad calls are part of the game... that's what makes it baseball." And while this may be true, I also think it's bullshit. How can fans be expected to respect the game when there is no recourse for obviously blown calls? That may be a part of baseball's past, but does it have to be a part of it's future?
Commissioner of Major League Baseball Bud Selig should be fired. He had a golden opportunity here to show the world that baseball can evolve out of this kind of embarrassing crap and have some integrity, but refuses to reverse the call. He could have used this as the perfect excuse to expand instant replay for judgement calls, but instead makes some vague promise to look into the situation.
Way to take the initiative, dumbass.
The pussification of America continues.
And this time we can't blame Canada.
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No argument here. Bud Selig is an idiot.
Well, this is just one of the reasons why Selig should be fired. A pretty minor one, in my opinion, but nevertheless. He’s got a long list of even worse offenses.
Personally, I wouldn’t overrule the safe call. Like you said, maybe obviously incorrect calls shouldn’t be part of our future, but the mechanism doesn not currently exist for a review and retraction (although it could fall under the Commissioner’s “overall benefit of the game” umbrella).
Anyway, here are a couple of great articles about the “imperfect” game from two of my favorite sportswriters. Joe Posnanski and Rob Neyer. The first one is more about the grace and dignity with which Galarraga handled the call. The second one dealing with the overblown assumption that Jim Joyce blew an “easy call”. I don’t think it was that easy when I watched the game live. Neither does Rob Neyer.
Baseball needs to expand the guidelines for the automatic review. Period.
For bad calls like what happened – espeically when the umpire admitted it was a bad call – the league needs to change. It’s a part of moving forward with the game, while still keeping it America’s Favorite Past Time.
It seem that Selig topped Keith Olbermann’s usual ‘holy trifecta’ of either Limbaugh, O’Reilly or Beck for “Worst Person in the World”, yesterday.
Selig is probably a secret teabagger and doesn’t want to allow any positive spin that it’d give Galarraga (a Latin American immigrant).
I dunno, for some reason Baseball is the only American sport I haven’t really quite gotten into. Maybe it’s because it’s slow and takes ages to play a game? But then again I like Cricket so what the hell do I know?
I too am a casual fan at best–I got when someone has free tickets or visits from out of town (since it’s like 3 miles to Turner Field, if that far).
But this was ridiculous, I agree.
Are you sure we can’t blame Canada? Why don’t we try it?