Quick quiz… how many of you remember Dallas Braden?
I’m willing to bet that the answer isn’t as high as it should be.
Just a few weeks ago, the young Oakland Athletic tossed Major League Baseball’s 19th perfect game, a feat that is one of the rarest in all of professional sports.
Or at least it was.
Since that time, Philly star Roy Halladay also reached perfection – we’ll likely remember that because not only is he on the hometown team, but also because “Doc” will one day be enshrined in Cooperstown – and Detroit Tiger Armando Galarraga did too.
Well, almost. We’ve all seen the replays now, as then first base umpire Jim Joyce blew an obvious call, which would have produced the game’s 27th and final out.
Instead, the runner was ruled safe and Galarraga had to settle for a complete game one-hitter, not nearly as glamorous and usually forgettable.
Except, we will not forget this one, and, in fact, Galarraga’s gem will likely be better remembered than Braden’s and even Halladay’s.
I’m not sure if Galarraga can take solace in that fact – personally, I’d rather have the perfect game myself – but it helps that Joyce was so upfront about his mistake, I’m sure.
Swaam props to him for his candid reaction to the replay and admission of his mistake, and also to MLB itself.
Several wanted Commissioner Bud Selig to reverse the call, but he stood his ground and told us all what we should already know, human error is part of the game.
He’s correct too, and reversing that call would have opened a Pandora’s box. Not only would we have had several guys who have tossed one-hitters wonder why replay wasn’t used to determine a close call or whether a ruled hit was an error, but also, what if one of these perfect games featured a three-ball count that saw an obvious ball four called a strike?
I’m sure it happened at some point, so do we go back and replay that too and take perfect games away? Thankfully, we’ll never have to answer that question.
