When I was 16 I spent a summer as an umpire in a kids’ baseball league. I stood behind the pitcher so I could call the pitches and the bases, and I did the best I could. Which wasn’t especially good. The coaches gave me long looks over an erratic strike zone, and the players kicked a lot of dirt. But who ever appreciates the ump?
There was a lot of screaming but I stuck to my guns. The runner went on to score, of course. In fact the floodgates opened. And when the game was lost, I drove home turning the matter over in my mind. My principled refusal to change my call had been admirable, but how much more admirable would it have been to get the call right in the first place?
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Over the years there would be other incidents in which character outpointed competence, and eventually I drew a distinction: We all make mistakes. But there is a difference between making a mistake and really fucking up. The problem with really fucking up is that other people usually get hurt, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Most fuckups are so swiftly followed by complications that there’s no going back, but in Joyce’s case, miraculously, there were none. If Joyce had reversed himself on the spot the Indians might have beefed: mistakes happen, and the Indians, trailing only 3-0, might have insisted on the opportunity to take advantage of Joyce’s. But the call stuck and they got that opportunity, and Galarraga retired the next batter to end the game. This meant a postgame reversal of the call would have done justice to Galarraga at no cost to anyone or anything except our subservience to fate.
And on to the slippery slope. “If Selig had announced Galarraga, in fact, did have a perfect game, he would have to make a few other changes too. The Cardinals would be awarded the 1985 World Series, which was changed forever by a Don Denkinger call. Milt Pappas would get his perfect game, because everyone knows Bruce Froemming squeezed him . . .”
In recent years a spate of innocent men have been cut loose after years in Illinois prisons, and the more docile and forgiving they are the more we like them. Joyce was apologetic and Galarraga forgiving, and the media promptly turned the fuckup into a celebration of character. “We Need More Jim Joyces in the World,” read an AOL headline. Joyce “did something highly unusual in this day and age,” columnist David Fagin wrote under it. “He accepted responsibility and apologized.” Phil Rogers wrote that “one of the beauties of sports is that it provides us teaching moments,” and explained that we’d just been seen a rare one. In a gesture of reconciliation, the next day Tigers manager Jim Leyland had Galarraga bring out the Tigers’ lineup card to Joyce, who was that day’s home plate umpire, and Galarraga gave the ump a pat on the back. “It was one of the great moments of the season,” Rogers wrote.
