For those of you who know me well, it would come as no shock. For those of you who know me only as a musician, it may mildly surprise you to find out that I love sports.
All kinds, really. I may not have a lot of time to be a spectator to live sporting events, but I watch, on TV, just about every playoff of most sports, every Grand Slam in Tennis (yea, waking up early before the Tivo days), the quaddrennials like the World Cup & the Olympics (both kinds), certainly the NFL, and every single football game that is played by my beloved Florida State Seminoles (the one thing, over and above everything, I will. stake. time for.).
But beyond the obvious, beyond the competition, the one thing I love (maybe even most) is how sports can teach us.
Maybe you read about the big event that happened this week. No, not the start of the Lakers and Celtics NBA final (saw it). It was the attempt by Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, to become only the 21st pitcher to pitch a perfect game in the HISTORY of Major League Baseball.
Think about it. This damn sport, obsessed about statistics above all other sports, has been around since the 1800s. Imagine the pitchers that have come and gone. And only 20 people have ever successfully gotten 27 up, 27 down. And the crazy thing? Two of them have happened this year. This would have been the third!
Bring you up to date, if you hadn’t heard:
Ninth inning, 2 outs. With a perfect game on the line, hitter drives infield towards the area between 1st and 2nd base. 1st baseman leaves the bag to field the hit, which means the pitcher runs over to cover 1st. 1st baseman throws the ball to the pitcher as he’s running over. That’s all the pitcher has to do: get to 1st base and tag the bag before the runner does.
Galarraga tags 1st base. Runner is out, right? But he’s not. Jim Joyce, the Umpire behind 1st base, calls him safe.
That’s right: no perfect game.
Except the replay clearly shows the runner was out. Galarraga got their first.
Crowd goes nuts, incredulously boos. Galaragga looks stunned, but smiles in a “Wow, did that just happen?” sort of way. He goes on to get the next runner out. End of game.
Here’s where it gets good
The way things are nowadays, you’d think it played out thusly:
Media/Blogosphere goes nuts. Pitcher pitches a fit. Umpire doesn’t own up to his mistake. Everyone yells at each other, unquestionable cynicism abounds.
But that’s not what happened.
Immediately after the game, Joyce the Umpire sees the replay and is heartbroken. He honestly believed he made the right call at the time, but he sees his mistake and immediately owns up to it. Without going to the clubhouse and showering, he immediately puts in a request to the Tigers Staff to see the pitcher. By all accounts I’ve read, he apologized to the Pitcher. Galarraga, displaying incredible class, actually said “hey, nobody’s perfect.”
Next morning’s news is nuts over this. Some people, mistakenly in my view, are calling for Joyce’s retirement or firing, but here’s where you lose me: the guy immediately owned up to his mistake and apologized. The pitcher quickly accepted the apology. I’m sorry: until you have a job as zero sum as a referee, I don’t think I’d be so quick to hate, as the kids say. Isn’t life about mistakes, and how you atone for them? Isn’t it true, what Armando said: “Hey, nobody’s perfect.”?
Here’s where it gets better
MLB told Joyce he could take the next day off. He didn’t. He suited up and, this time, was the umpire behind home plate. Displaying even more class, the Tigers’ manager, Jim Leyland—rather than himself bringing out the team’s lineup to the umpire before the game–instead instructed Galarraga to deliver the lineup sheet to Joyce. In this symbolic display of good sportsmanship, Galaragga extended his hand. Joyce, if you saw the guy, just looks like an old walrus; and old, gruff-looking, Irish walrus. Yet, he was visibly moved to tears. They shook.
Here’s where it sucks for a second
My understanding is the Commissioner of Baseball has an overriding authority to right wrongs in, as the rules state, “for the good of the game.” Bud Selig, who used his acumen as a car leasing executive for his father’s company to naturally fold toward a path to being Major League Baseball’s Commissioner, had this one served up on a silver platter. But he wasn’t about to stray from his well-documented list of gaffes. Not Bud. Not this day.
Listen, I get the slippery slope of revising history. It’s dangerous. “Then, why not ‘this’… if that?” is the theory. But I find this to be a once-in-a-generation possibility: The replay clearly shows the batter was out. The umpire is overwhelmingly of the opinion he made a mistake; all parties are playing the class act.
Of course, Bud Selig, who wouldn’t know an opportunity like this if it pricked him in the ass like a needle filled with performance enhancing drugs, refused to reverse the call.
Lesson Learned? Yes.
Well within your right, you could throw up your hands and cry foul. This is too quick, too simple, in my opinion. The no-brainer approach is that yes, Bud Selig is a douche. But it’s too obvious, and too easy to let get under our collective skins. Thing is, we have an incredible and unintended consequence happening right under our noses.
Think of it this way: If your arm was broken by someone, and you sued, you’d probably be involved with lawyers for a much longer period of time than the pain. The truth of the matter is, while you’re filing lawsuits and preparing testimony, your arm is healing. Every single moment that moves along the path of time, your arm is getting better, and I might add, getting stronger. By the time the trial starts, it’s more likely you’ve completely healed.
Think about that.
Jim Joyce, Armando Galarraga, Detroit Manager Jim Leyland (and the entire Tigers Organization) showed us how it’s done. I can look at my 14-month old son, and convincingly tell him hey, you play sports for the reasons they displayed: good sportsmanship, owning up to mistakes, displaying class in the face of pressure to cave into our baser instincts.
And they did it for one other reason:
For the good of the game.
This is why I love sports.
