1. In one moment last night we got an important snapshot of the season: Pitchers have dabbled with perfection and umpires have not.
By now you probably know that Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game last night, except first base ump Jim Joyce denied history with incompetence. On what should have been the 27th and final out, Jason Donald was out at first base – clearly out – but Joyce called him safe.
It would have been the third perfect game of this season and would have given a so-far ordinary pitcher in Galarraga a forever moment. But Joyce deprived that forever moment.
I wrote this column last year during a postseason as infamous for horrible work by the umpires as anything else. In the piece, I recommended an expanded use of technology to help get a greater degree of calls correct. I noted that Bud Selig is against doing this, mostly out of fear of further slowing the pace of the game. But there are ways of expediting these challenges – notably by making it illegal for a manager to come out and argue any more. Rather than that total waste of time, just go to the tape.
But the key thing is to get important calls right. And – this is another point I have been making for years – the introduction of super slo-mo replays and high-def TV have shown what a fallacy it is that umps get 99 percent of the calls correct. Most times, now, it seems they are just guessing on the bang-bang plays. In the recently completed Indians-Yankees series, C.B. Bucknor would have gotten more close calls right if he simply flipped a coin.
Look, it is always easy to pile on the umps, they are nobody’s home team. But they have become a true sore spot in the game, and this is a moment for Selig to act. Because it is not just bad calls, but bad acts. Joe West, Angel Hernandez and Bill Hohn have all had run-ins in the last week with players and managers that appeared as fired up by what are supposed to be the level-headed, neutral arbiters as the uniformed personnel involved.
West, Hernandez and Bob Davidson, in particular, always appear to think they are the game. No one should even know who is umpiring a game; they should be like good offensive linemen, when they are doing their jobs you don’t notice them. But you always notice West, Hernandez and Davidson.
Selig has a moment right now where he has the high ground – no one is going to publicly take the side of the umpires – and he must demand better in both percentage of calls right and behavior. And he seriously has to take another look at expanding replay. In the matter of seconds a viewer knew Jim Joyce had wrecked history last night. It seems worth those few extra seconds to get the call right – even if Joe West might not like if the game gets a little longer because of it.
And are two other things to think about moving forward: 1) MLB should keep Joyce away from umpiring any Tiger games, specifically anything involving Galarraga. Joyce did the professional, classy thing last night by not only taking full responsibility for the blown call, but actually apologizing face-to-face with Galarraga. But that act, more than any other, would worry me if I were an opposing manager and Joyce was working a Galarraga game behind home plate. Human nature is human nature, and I think that would lead Joyce to try to make amends. If I were an opposing manager in that situation, I would play the game under protest from the outset.
2) There is a call now for Selig to retroactively restore a perfect game for Galarraga. It feels right. But it is so wrong. Ultimately, Joyce’s blunder cost Galarraga history, but not his team a game. If Selig reverses this call what happens the next time there is an umpire’s mistake that literally costs a team a game? How do you fix, for example, Galarraga’s spot in history, but not Phil Cuzzi’s miserable call in the playoffs last year that possibly cost the Twins’ a game against the Yankees?
Look, in a way, Galarraga now has the second most famous “perfect” game in history behind Don Larsen’s World Series effort. .The record book does not have to be amended. Let’s give people credit that they can keep a complicated thought in their brains; like how those with an IQ over a peanut understand that Ken Griffey Jr.’s 630 homers are far different from the 583 that Mark McGwire hit.
2. From May 3 to May 28, 1989, Mike Schmidt went 5-for-57, an .088 average, and did not hit a homer. His average fell to .203 and, boom, pretty much out of nowhere he called a press conference that turned full of tears as he announced his retirement, ending the career of probably the greatest third baseman ever.
That was my first year as a full-time baseball beat reporter as I was covering the Yankees on a daily basis. A week earlier the Mariners had come to New York and I had seen a rookie who had been touted like Stephen Strasburg is being touted now. That rookie was Ken Griffey Jr. In the middle game of that series, Griffey brutalized two homers to right off of a forgettable righty named Jimmy Jones. What wasn’t forgettable was the swing. It was a swing made from baseball heaven.
I was glad to see Griffey so early in his career. If you love baseball, it made you feel like your saw the Beatles in Hamburg in the early 1960s.
The following year, in April of 1990, I was there when Griffey made what is still among the best catches I have ever seen. Jesse Barfield hit what he thought was the 200th homer of his career, a laser shot to center. But Griffey defied that concept – and seemingly gravity. He raced back, took off from the lip of the warning track and as his cleats stuck into the wall to give him a little extra lift, Griffey reached over the wall and took the ball back. It felt more like an optical illusion than a baseball play.
I do not believe that the play could be choreographed for a baseball movie. It could only happen in real time, performed out of the imagination and talent of a baseball genius.
Five years later, Griffey homered five times in a Division Series against the Yankees. And I was there in the Kingdome when Griffey zoomed around from first base to score the series-clinching run on an Edgar Martinez double. At the end of his graceful run, he popped up and was bear hugged by the 20-year-old who was at home plate imploring him to slide: That 20-year-old was Alex Rodriguez.
It is funny how the baton pass of baseball works. Schmidt to Griffey, Griffey to A-Rod, maybe even this year Griffey to another 20-year-old named Jason Heyward.
Schmidt finished with 548 career homers. Griffey passed him on June 25, 2006 and finished with 630 homers. A-Rod passed Schmidt on Sept 3, 2008, and has 590 homers and probably will pass his one-time teammate, Griffey, next year. Maybe one day we will all be glad we saw Heyward at the beginning as he starts passing all-time greats on the homer list.
Like Schmidt, Griffey decided yesterday, during a season, that he was done. The magic just was gone from that swing, the grace robbed from the body by age.
I know I am glad I saw Griffey in his rookie season. I know I am glad I have images in my brain of how beautiful he made this game. I will not remember the end – the old man – I will remember when Griffey was Junior and anything on a baseball field seemed possible.
3. Johan Santana has consistently said he has no regrets about forcing his way out of Minnesota and waiving his no-trade rights to come to the Mets. And Santana is an optimist, a pitcher who believes by the combination of his talent and will that he can improve all around him.
But I wonder if in a private moment when he is being completely honest he regrets being a Met, being around the dysfunction and the injuries and the poor decisions – and this year the utter lack of offense. I wonder if he feels he has left wins and championships on the table with his decision.
Santana has allowed no earned runs in five starts this year. And in those five starts, Santana has just one win and the Mets are just 2-3 in those games. He has an 0.74 ERA in his last five starts, and yet has just one win and the Mets are just 1-4 in those games.