{"id":5577,"date":"2010-06-03T18:14:15","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T01:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seamheads.com\/?p=5577"},"modified":"2010-06-04T04:09:13","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T11:09:13","slug":"thats-just-me-i-like-to-get-the-question-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/03\/thats-just-me-i-like-to-get-the-question-right\/","title":{"rendered":"That’s Just Me, I Like to Get the Question Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Armando Galarraga should have pitched a perfect game.\u00c2\u00a0 He should have retired twenty-seven batters in a row.\u00c2\u00a0 He should have joined the twenty other pitchers in Major League history to have accomplished this feat.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead he got screwed.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a once-in-a-lifetime, overwhelmingly improbable, shockingly emotional screw-job comparable to when Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels conspired to steal Bret the Hitman Hart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s World Championship in 1997.<\/p>\n

One instant, Galarraga was beyond the velvet ropes of Toots Shor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, rubbing elbows with Frankie and Dino.\u00c2\u00a0 The next, he found himself in the drive through of the local Taco Bell.<\/p>\n

Galarraga, offending umpire Jim Joyce, and the entire Tigers organization should be commended for the grace with which they have handled this turn of events.\u00c2\u00a0 Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 manager, Jim Leyland commented after the game on the unprecedented turn of events that robbed his young right-hander of immortality.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure somebody is going to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If they had replay on that play, the kid would have had a perfect game.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Somebody will say something about that, but not me\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just the human element.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good element.\u00c2\u00a0 The umpires do a great job.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no question about that.\u00c2\u00a0 They are right a whole lot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leyland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Baseball umpires have to deal with a game that progresses in moments of explosive action that take place in fractions of a second.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the time, shockingly, they nail the call.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a thankless job in that we expect them to be like \"\"<\/a>children raised in the Puritan societies of the 1700s\u00e2\u20ac\u201dseen, but not heard.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that I had never heard of Jim Joyce prior to last night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debacle, as opposed to the bastions of hubris and incompetence that are Joe West and Angel Hernandez, speaks volumes for his resume.\u00c2\u00a0 However, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now going to be forever known as that guy that blew that kid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perfect game.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfair.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfair to Galarraga.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfair to Joyce.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfair to baseball fans everywhere who could not even conceive the possibility of witnessing three perfectos in one season.<\/p>\n

Blame the human element<\/em> and the baseball brass and traditionalists who cling to those two words like an aged jogger who refuses to trade in his walkman for an iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 What really boils my potatoes about this whole situation is the hypocrisy of the people who run professional baseball.<\/p>\n

These snake-oil salesmen have, from one side of their mouths, espoused the traditions and integrity of the game in their opposition to instant replay, and from the other side, mortgaged that integrity as chemically induced superstars made a mockery of the very statistics and numbers that comprise that very integrity.\u00c2\u00a0 In 1985, when Don Denkinger cost the Royals the World Series, technology had not reached the point where we could instantaneously recognize and rectify his mistake.\u00c2\u00a0 We had to chalk the Cardinals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 victory up to the machinations of the baseball gods and the human fallibility involved in officiating a game of inches.<\/p>\n

For as long as I can remember, baseball people have referred to the human element<\/em> of \"\"<\/a>baseball as if it were some irremovable, all-powerful mea culpa.\u00c2\u00a0 I never understood this.\u00c2\u00a0 When Michael Brown, director of FEMA, responded to the tragedy that was Katrina with all the urgency of a 60-year-old strolling down the driveway to pick up his morning paper, did we attribute it to the human element of running a federally funded national aid agency?\u00c2\u00a0 When I total the grades of my students at the end of the school year, do I use long addition and an abacus?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I use a calculator and a spreadsheet, limiting the human element of grade calculation.<\/p>\n

Technology has reached a point where, provided with seven minutes, a tripod, a flip cam, and a few willing parents with smart phones, I can MacGyver up a surprisingly effective and accurate instant replay system for the team of sixth graders I coach.\u00c2\u00a0 You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re telling me the billion-dollar industry that is Major League Baseball can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do something similar?\u00c2\u00a0 Add a fifth umpire to the traditional four-man crew, put him in the\"\"<\/a> press box, let him be the official scorer and the replay official that makes the final ruling on any close play.\u00c2\u00a0 That way we keep the official scoring system objective and provide a quick and efficient means of oversight for a particularly harrowing job.<\/p>\n

For some reason, baseball always sacrifices progress for some obscure notion of purity and tradition.\u00c2\u00a0 In my opinion, accurate officiating is as pure as one can get.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll always remember the Calculus teacher I had in my senior year of high school, who, after taking us through a particularly challenging series of formulas and mathematical steps, would say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just me, I like to get the question right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that be our goal here?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, when people argue that the human element of baseball should be preserved, I wonder if they know what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to save.\u00c2\u00a0 An older gentleman often umpires the games of my sixth-grade team.\u00c2\u00a0 Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s call him \u00e2\u20ac\u0153T.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 While my expectations of an 80-plus-year-old man umping middle school baseball games are already pretty low, T still manages to surprise me.\u00c2\u00a0 He stands behind the pitcher, calls strikes with a raise of his right hand, calls balls with a raise of his left, and once called a pitch by raising both his right and his left hands simultaneously.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in his eighties, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unrealistic to expect him to get in the correct position on a play in the field.\u00c2\u00a0 He coaches the pitchers, incorrectly tinkering with their mechanics, and will not stop B.S.ing with the people he knows between innings despite the fact that our league will not allow us to start an inning after 5 PM.<\/p>\n

T is the epitome of the human element of baseball.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m for anything that limits T\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role in deciding a baseball game.<\/p>\n

But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just me, I like to get the question right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armando Galarraga should have pitched a perfect game.\u00c2\u00a0 He should have retired twenty-seven batters in a row.\u00c2\u00a0 He should have joined the twenty other pitchers in Major League history to have accomplished this feat. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead he got screwed.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a once-in-a-lifetime, overwhelmingly improbable, shockingly emotional screw-job comparable to when Vince McMahon and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[2119,7872,7883,146,7874,7885,7878,7884,7881,7877,7880,1553,3392,3939,1821,7873,7876,7879,7871,7875,7882],"class_list":["post-5577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-armando-galarraga","tag-baseball-umpires","tag-bastions","tag-batters","tag-bret-the-hitman-hart","tag-debacle","tag-explosive-action","tag-hubris","tag-human-element","tag-jim-joyce","tag-joe-west","tag-league-history","tag-manager-jim-leyland","tag-perfect-game","tag-right-hander","tag-screw-job","tag-shawn-michaels","tag-thankless-job","tag-toots-shor","tag-velvet-ropes","tag-vince-mcmahon"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}