In case you’re not as into sports as we here at The Mep Report are, you might have missed this little gem from last night: the worst call in the history of professional baseball. Not that we ever engage in hyperbole anyway, but just in case you’re tempted to think that’s what I’m engaging in here, I give you umpire Jim Joyce and one hard luck pitcher called Armando Galarraga.
You see, Galarraga was one out from a perfect game–a game in which no man reaches base by any means whatsoever. No walks, errors, earthquakes allowed: no one can reach base or the perfect game is gone. This is why it’s only happened twenty times in the hundred plus year history of baseball (though, bizarrely, two of those times have happened this season already). But Galarraga wasn’t just pitching a perfect game; he was pitching one of the greatest games in the history of baseball. Up to the final out he had thrown a total of 87 pitches, and the game had lasted an hour and 43 minutes total. These are staggering, holy @^&*! type of statistics. And then, as Jason Donald strode to the plate, this happened.
Yep. Inexplicably, unbelievably, staggeringly, a twenty year umpiring veteran staring right at the call blew it and ruled the runner safe when he was clearly out, thereby eliminating the possibility of a perfect game. In fairness to Joyce (who is widely considered to be one of the best umpires in baseball), he practically committed hara-kiri during the post-game press conference, calling himself an idiot in, er, far more colorful terms. He just screwed the call up. Today there’s a huge outcry for commissioner Bud Selig to overturn the call, but most experts doubt that’s going to happen; it would open a huge can of worms going forward, and it’s doubtful that Selig wants that on his watch. But the most important thing that should come out of this situation is painfully simple, so simple it can be summarized in two words:
Instant replay.
Some of you who don’t follow baseball might be perplexed by this statement. “They don’t have that already?” you might be tempted to say, if you’re, you know, rational, logical, sensible, and not married to an ancient system of unwritten rules and ridiculously antiquated concepts that forbid the most basic of technologies from being applied to a multimillion dollar sport. Football, hockey, basketball–hell, even tennis–use instant replay. Why? Because there’s absolutely no reason not to. Why, when you have the opportunity to get a call right, would you turn your back on that opportunity? Apparently because we’re afraid of what big bad technology would do to the “integrity” of the sport. It’s much better to let bad calls destroy the integrity of the game, because hey, at least it’s human beings doing that!
Under enormous pressure, baseball finally allowed instant replay to be used on home run calls a couple of years ago. But the fact that we’re still sitting around wondering if it’s better to let history and money ride on human error or video precision is testament to how retrograde baseball is in every sense of the word. If you’re so worried about the time delay, do this: one instant replay challenge per game for each team. That’s it. Replay has immeasurably improved every other sport, and we don’t have to sit around wondering what if on the day after.
Obviously this isn’t a big deal in the scheme of life–environmental problems, social justice, economic issues are much more important than a silly baseball game. But within the context of sports, this couldn’t be a worse mistake. For his part, Galarraga was incredibly gracious: “He’s just human,” the pitcher said. Indeed he is, Armando. And that’s exactly why adding a tool to the arsenal of these humans calling the game–a tool which humans, after all, invented in the first place–is so critically necessary. Do it today.
