Umpire blows perfect game with bad call? Time for baseball to introduce video replays? No

It would have been the third perfect game this season — which is intense, considering there’s been less than two dozen in all of major league baseball history.

But Detroit’s Armando Galarraga, as the photo above indicates, wuz robbed. The Associated Press tells the tale:

DETROIT—Armando Galarraga squeezed the ball in his mitt, stepped on first base with his right foot and was ready to celebrate the first perfect game in Detroit Tigers’ history.

What happened next will be the talk of baseball for the rest of this season and likely a lot longer.

Umpire Jim Joyce emphatically called Cleveland’s Jason Donald safe and a chorus of groans and boos echoed in Comerica Park.

Then Joyce emphatically said he was wrong and later, in tears, hugged Galarraga and apologized.

Here’s the play, on YouTube:

We can watch it over and over — the runner is clearly out. Already there is a growing clamour out there to give umpires the same benefit we’re enjoying: the benefit of using video replays to judge calls. This incident is only likely to intensify that.

But I say no. I say video replay is wrong for the sport, and not only because it would slow an already lengthy game.

Sure, umpires are fallible. They’re human. They make mistakes. Let that be part of the game. Let bad calls happen — the same way that dropped catches, wild pitches, and runners stumbling happens.

If pitchers never made mistakes, they would pitch “perfect” games more often than not. But pitchers miss their marks. If hitters never made mistakes, they’d bat 1.000 every year (and a single inning would last forever).

But we acknowledge that the players are fallible, and we watch to see which team is better than the other.

Well, let’s consider that the officials are a sort of “third team” out on the field. And, just like we don’t demand do-overs when two outfielders run into each other while chasing a pop fly, and we don’t demand a second chance if a throw is wide of the base, let’s not force umpires to double-check all of their decisions.

Bad calls will happen, sure. And they’re frustrating. But so are ninth-inning meltdowns.

Bad calls are part of the game. They add an element of unpredictability — keeping baseball a human endeavour instead of a computer simulation. They’re the real wild card.

I say I like ‘em, and I say let’s keep ‘em.