I know the Coyotes are a hockey team. I also know the NHL has been actively fighting relocation efforts despite the fact that that the organization is bleeding money and has never been (nor is really expected to ever be) financially viable. So, therefore, leagues other than MLB also prevent franchise relocations.
Unless Hawkeyeop meant something else, and I didn’t understand his intent. Or maybe I didn’t understand your post either, and you’re referring to the Coyotes as some symbolic representation of Gary Bettman’s personal pride or something.
I admit that I am fully lost now, and so I’ll just go back to reading about the blown call.
Talking with a co-worker who brought up a good point. Let’s say that the situation were flipped. That the runner was obviously safe, but Joyce called him out.
In the “interests of baseball” should Selig have stepped in and nixed the perfect game?
I’m not quite sure on the details, but I thought the NHL has some sort of ownership stake in the Coyotes which gives them more influence than usual. I could be wrong though.
First of all, “obviously” does not apply in this situation, so the question is moot as it applies to this game.
Donald did not obviously (i.e., to the naked eye) beat the throw. It was a bang-bang play, and by definition, such plays can go either way.
As I pointed out in this post, had Jim Joyce – having weighed the prevailing circumstances prior to Donald’s swing – gone on to make an out call on a close play, no one in the ballpark, including the Cleveland Indians, would have protested under this particular set of circumstances.
If a subsequent replay had shown that Donald was actually safe, the universal reaction would have been “Oh well, that’s baseball” – just as it has been throughout the 53+ years since Don Drysdale’s last called strike in his perfect game.
You absolutely cannot look at this set of circumstances as if this were the ending to just another baseball game. It was the ending to a game which has only 20 other precedents in a century and a quarter of major league baseball.
Furthermore, it deals with a different dimension of the game – that is, personal records vs. team ones. In a box score, the only thing that ultimately matters at the end of the game is which team has a greater number in the runs column. The team that has played the most games in which that number is greater than their opponents’ wins the division.
If Selig were to declare this a perfect game “in the interests of baseball” (which it manifestly is), his action would have zero impact on the standings in the American League Central at the conclusion of the 2010 season.
If it did have an impact, I might be able to see so-called “purists” being worked up about it. But that’s not the case.
According to Wiki, the NHL owns the Coyotes now. They had been bankrolling them in secret for a while before the bankruptcy. Jim Balsille came in with huge bags of cash and a very nice bribe for the city of Glendale- $50 million dollars if they would enjoy one last year of hockey and keep their mouths shut while the team moved to Hamilton where there is an actual market for hockey.
The NHL said no… in the same way Hitler was screaming NEIN NEIN NEIN! in Inglourious Basterds. So now the NHL owns this pit in Arizona that millions of dollars will get dumped into.
[/not bitter]
Gallaraga and Joyce gave us all lessons on Class – how to accept disappointment gracefully, and how to man up and acknowledge a mistake.
Selig, on the other hand, had an opportunity grow a set, step up, make the bold move and make the situation right. He whiffed pathetically. What a surprise.
As has been said before…if he’s worried about setting a precedent: fine. The next time a perfect game is ruined by a blown call on the 27th out and the umpire freely admits he blew it…then reverse that call, too.
(I’m an umpire, and I’ve seen worse calls. That was tough – half a step, at most. On the first viewing I thought it was a tie.)
jcs1953Is that really the only time you’d allow the commish to reverse a call? What do you do with the AB and subsequent AB? See my reply to Cliffy on the previous page. You are making the same argument, basically saying this is an extraordinary situation. Others will surely follow. A slippery slope argument is valid if, indeed, there is a slippery slope.
If it had been a bad call in the 6th, or even the 8th inning, no way should the commissioner get involved. But this is an easy call to reverse, precisely because it was the final out. You don’t have to get into “what ifs”… if the right call had been made, game over. So reverse the call, erase the subsequent AB from the books. So let it be written…so let it be done.
Except when they don’t, which seems to be your point.
Selig did say he was opening a study of expanding instant replay to MLB, which may be the one good thing to come of this episode, other than Galarraga’s and Joyce’s displays of sportsmanship.
Selig doesn’t have to reverse the call - all he needs to do is rule that Galarraga should be given credit for a perfect game in the record books, so his name can stand alongside of Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter and the others who have pitched perfectos. This wouldn’t involve erasing what happened on the field or changing the box score.
Oh, and yes, Selig has always been a useless fool.
I just shudder at the idea of opening that can of worms, because MLB will probably f’ it up. Setting aside balls and strikes, I’d say umpires are probably about 99.9% accurate on force outs, tag plays, fair/foul, catch/no-catch. Is that extra 0.1% worth it?
Maybe if you give each team a red challenge flag and let them throw it once/game. That might work.
When Selig says he’s opening a study, it usually means nothing will happen. Years ago there was a group that wanted to buy the Oakland A’s, but Selig put the sale on hold, saying that he didn’t want to allow a sale until he had the chance to conduct a study of the viability of small-market teams. The study never materialized and the prospective owners gave up. I don’t know why Selig needed to conduct such a study - he owned a small-market team for years. It was just a way for him to make the issue go away without having to say “no.”
What do you do with them? With the stroke of a pen, you change the scoring on Donald’s AB, and pretend that Crowe’s never happened – just as we do with the AB’s from a game that’s called before five innings.
And then, if you’re a human being, you sleep very soundly that night and all future ones, confident that the world has and will keep on turning despite your monstrous, earthshaking act.
We have detailed records of more games in the sport of baseball than any other major sport. We don’t have to guess at the probability that this kind of extraordinary situation will occur again.
We already know, from these detailed records, that the probability that a perfect game of any kind will be pitched is infinitesimally small. The probability of a perfect game ending as last night’s did – or in a similarly bizarre fashion – is even smaller. Do you really want to label this “surely”?
What you’re saying is that, should a situation comparable to this one ever present itself again, reasonable men and women will be helpless, and utterly incapable of rendering a fair and reasonable judgment unless they have rigid, unbending rules in place to help them deal with it.
Personally, I think people came down too hard on him for the all-star game extra inning fiasco. I may not have made the exact same decision as him, but I felt his decision was defensible. His looking the other way while everyone was juicing sure looks bad in hindsight, but EVERYONE ignored it so you can’t really put all the blame on him. Overall, I thought he had been a capable if unremarkable steward for the game. This situation, however, demanded a commish with a backbone, and he showed none.
Donald suffers a bit for that, but you are okay with that, I suppose. Now suppose this was the last game of the year and instead the player was attempting to hit .400 for the year. If he gets a hit, he breaks .400, if he doesn’t he is below. The ump blows the call. What should the commish do?
20 perfect games = non zero probability. I don’t think you understand infinitesimally.
Now I know you don’t know the meaning.
No, I’m not saying that. You are advocating that the rules are not really rules, but guidelines. Nothing wrong with that position, but I believe it makes ruling the game almost impossible. In this case, we have a clearly defined situation that is well covered by the rules. And yet there are still people calling for an exception. The decision of Selig was fair and consistent with the rules of baseball. If you believe it is in the best interest of baseball to have the commish step in and abandon those rules because of some slight you feel has been made, I contend it surely will lead to other situations where people will hold this up as a president in other situations for the commish to step in and abandon the rules.
But wait, you want the new rule to be: In the case of the final out of a perfect game instant replay will be used. And should this actually come to pass, you don’t see this being used by other to advocate for righting wrong calls in other situations? I’d be my house that others would use this as reason for other situation to employ instant replay.
See, we already have a rule and people want an exception to it… and to make a new rule. But then others will follow and want an exception to the new rule. And so it will go.
It was not a bang-bang play. It was a straightforward call, and only after examining it in slow-mo several times and knowing its import can you [I mean ‘you’ in general] convince yourself it’s a bang-bang call that could have gone either way. It wasn’t. There have been easier calls, but there have been much harder calls that were still made correctly.
I’m not surprised Selig didn’t intervene here, but I think he should have. Whether or not they’d admit it I think both Galarraga and Joyce both wish he’d done the right thing. Galarraga in particular has been a mensch about this, and I don’t just mean in his public statements or in turning in the lineup card. Look at his face before and after Joyce’s call.
He’s getting a raw deal, but in the long run… let me put it this way: most baseball fans can’t name all the pitchers who’ve thrown a perfect game. I can’t, and every time someone throws one, I look at SI’s photo spread of all the PG pitchers. On the other hand, if you’re a hardcore baseball fan and I say the name “Harvey Haddix,” I don’t need to tell you who that is or why Galarraga is in a similar situation. Or why Galarraga deserves to receive a similar kind of fame, up to and including an exhibit in the Hall next to Haddix’s. I suppose that’s always going to be a little bittersweet, but even in baseball’s grand scheme of things it’s pretty good.
