Baseball Commissioner, Bud Selig, must overrule bad umpire call that wiped out perfect game

[Better Believe It]

Selig must change the call
By Jon Paul Morosi
June 3, 2010

Jim Joyce fessed up. Oh, how he fessed up.

Now, it’s time for Bud Selig to take a stand and prevent Armando Galarraga’s brilliant night from becoming one of the biggest embarrassments in recent baseball history.

Wednesday’s story was supposed to end with Galarraga riding on the shoulders of his teammates, after completing the first perfect game in Tigers history. Instead, we found Joyce pacing back and forth in the umpire’s room at Comerica Park, wearing his skivvies and the grim look of a man who knew he had erred, profoundly and tragically.

Joyce initially was convinced he got the call correct. The on-field protests of Gerald Laird, Miguel Cabrera and Jim Leyland didn’t change his mind. No way. But then he retreated to the innards of Comerica Park, asked a clubhouse attendant to cue up the replay, and saw for himself.

I missed it,” Joyce said a few minutes later, almost in tears. “I missed it. … This isn’t ‘a call.’ This is a history call. And I kicked the s*** out of it.

“There’s nobody that feels worse than I do. I take pride in this job. … I took a perfect game away from that kid over there, who worked his ass off all night.”

As hard as this may be to believe, Joyce owes the public no further explanation. He said what he needed to say.

Now, it’s Selig's turn.

The commissioner must do the right thing: overturn Joyce’s call and credit Galarraga with the perfect game he deserves.

Selig can’t stand to have Galarraga, the Tigers and 17,738 paying customers feel like they were cheated out of their place in history. If that isn’t worthy of Selig invoking the “best interest of the game” clause, I don’t know what is.

The real truth is that Joyce’s conscience needs the reprieve worse than Galarraga’s resume. The welfare of Joyce, a longstanding MLB employee who has umpired in All-Star Games and World Series, is in the commissioner’s hands.

Joyce admitted that he made a horrible mistake. Selig is the only man who can save him from perpetual ridicule in Detroit.

Let me be clear: This is not a call for the broader use of instant replay. This is a straightforward, isolated case: When everyone agrees that a wrong has occurred, and there would be so little hardship in making the change, action must be taken to protect the game’s integrity.

Selig has been wary of expanding replay, for reasons I understand. But correcting one simple call, at the end of one game in June, is not going to open a Pandora’s Box of infinite protests and replay requests.

This was different. This was the 27th out of a BLEEPING PERFECT GAME — a mistake that had absolutely zero effect on which team won.

For all those who are worried about setting a precedent that changes the nature of baseball, I believe you would get unanimous support for the following rule change: If a pitcher is wronged out of a no-hitter or perfect game by an umpire’s call with two out in the ninth inning, and the umpire himself almost immediately declares that the call was incorrect, the pitcher should be awarded with what is rightfully his.

There. Let’s put that right in the book for next time. But for there to be a next time, there has to be a first time.

Bud Selig, and Bud Selig alone, has the chance to make this right for all who love baseball and its great history.

Don’t disappoint us.

Read the full article at:

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Bud-Selig-must-overrule-call-that-wiped-out-perfect-game-060210?GT1=39002





THE PITCHER ALREADY HAS THE BALL IN HIS GLOVE AT FIRST BASE. THE RUNNER WAS CLEARLY OUT


See the video of the play at this MLB link:

http://detroit.tigers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100602&content_id=10727590&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=det