Nobody's Perfect

Two nights ago, umpire Jim Joyce blew a call at first base. No big deal, right? It happens. The baseball purists like myself will argue that human error always has been and always should be part of the game. We argue with those who want to institute video replay into our tradition-filled sport. But this blown call is a bit different than any other. Armando Galarraga of the Tigers had sat down 26 Cleveland Indians in a row. One batter away from a perfect game, he gets Cleveland's Jason Donald to roll a grounder between first and second. First baseman Miguel Cabrera fields it and throws on to Galarraga who was covering the bag. Donald is out, game over, perfect game. But to quote myself watching the replay on Sportscenter, fully expecting to see that this kid threw a perfecto, "Holy shit, he called him safe." So my real point of this is the dilemma that I have putting myself in the umpire's shoes. There is an old baseball saying that says sometimes there is a difference between the right call and the proper call. The right call in this case doesn't matter because he got it wrong, but let's say Donald did beat Galarraga to the bag by a split second. Do you call him safe? I mean Donald hustled up the line hard. His job was to break up that perfect game, so do you take that away from him? The right call is safe. But, in my opinion, I think the proper call is out. There are certain situations where you give a player the benefit of the doubt when you are the umpire. This was a situation where even if you think he was safe, you call him out. And please don't think I'm immoral, umpires do this all the time. An infielder will make a spectacular diving stab, get up and throw to first and in a bang-bang instance the runner beats it. But sometimes when a fielder makes a play like that, he gets the benefit of the doubt. It's strictly situational. If this play at first happened in the 3rd inning, then feel free to call him safe. But in my opinion, the umpire needs to know the magnitude of the situation. There have been millions of infield singles in baseball history, but only 20 perfect games. Joyce single-handedly took a perfect game away from a Armando Galarraga.

"How could that idiot call him safe." Well, that's easy. He called him safe because he genuinely thought the runner beat the pitcher to the bag. So here comes the replay talk. Baseball is a sport like no other as far as action. I have always said, you're either a baseball fan or you aren't, there's no in between. People hate it because it's "boring". And as much as I hate to admit it, it's the majority of people who think this. Sorry purists, I think we're in the minority. So how do you take a slow game and add replay? You can't use it on every bang-bang call because there are so many. It would be like challenging the spot on every play of a football game. Guys like me will tell you that replay should not exist in baseball, but a situation like this comes around and makes it hard to argue. So here is my argument. Watch baseball and you will see that these guys get 99% of those calls right. They are major league umpires for a reason, they are very very good at it. This is a freak situation. It is going to happen when an umpire misses a call, it just usually isn't the biggest call of his, or a pitcher's career. I have heard people say that you give a team one challenge per game. Well this play is on the 27th out of the game, even if they had a challenge they probably would have used it by then. Even after a history-changing call, I am still completely against instant replay in baseball.

Finally, I wanted to give some credit to those involved. Jim Joyce made what he thought was the right call. He watched the replay and saw that he blew it. He then did what most umpires would never dream of doing, and perhaps the most admirable and professional thing I have ever seen. He went to the Tigers clubhouse where, at the moment he was public enemy number one, and apologized. He quoted that "Galarraga had every right to be in his face, but he didn't say a word." He's right, not a word. Armanda Galarraga handled the most heart-breaking moment of his career with grace that you do not see in sports. A moment when most of us would have at least argued, if not exploded and gotten tossed, he did none of that. He sucked it up, and went and got the last out. And in yesterday's game, with Joyce behind the plate, Galarraga took the lineup card out during pre-game and patted Joyce on the back. It brought tears to Joyce's eyes. Both of these men have turned this bad situation into a little bit of a warmer story, strictly out of the professionalism and respect they have showed each other. This is a perfect lesson in "nobody's perfect". I just hope next time, Jim Joyce makes the proper call.

Describe Ken Griffey Jr in one word..... Smooth

Its a sad but great day for the game of baseball. Ken Griffey Jr, the greatest baseball player I have ever had privilege to watch play the game is calling it a career after 22 one of a kind seasons. Numbers wise he is no doubt one of the greatest players of all time and in my opinion a modern day legend. He finishes with 2671 games, 630 homeruns, .284 batting average, 10 consecutive gold gloves, and 1 AL MVP Award.

The problem with remembering Griffey is that he played for 22 seasons and most people will only remember him playing for the Cincinnati Reds since the year 2000, and that's a shame. The Griffey in Cincinnati isn't the same Griffey that played for Seattle for the first 10 years of his career. Most of my middle and high school days were in the 1990s and that's the time in my life when I was the most enamored with sports. I would watch sportscenter every day for hours on end, and when the baseball highlights came on there was one guarantee.... Ken Griffey Jr. did something spectacular. Griffey had a skill set and a game that you haven't seen since him in his prime. He didn't just hit for power but he hit for average, take away the last few years and he is up around .300 for his career batting average which is ridiculous, not to mention the fact that he was all over the field defensively. It seemed like every game he played he was climbing the wall to rob a homerun or making some ridiculous diving catch at the batters expense.


Not only did Griffey make all of the plays in the field but he made them look easy, he played with such grace and elegance that he made the hardest play look routine. Watching him play defense was like watching animal planet. He was like a cheetah sitting and waiting for his prey to walk out in the open. In his case his prey was a baseball, he would just stand there... waiting... finally it would happen, someone would get a hit.... and he would take off. Striding and stalking it, closing ground with every step he takes, you think to yourself there is no way he can get to it, and just as you think the ball is going to land safely on the ground he dives, getting his leather just under the ball, eating it up like the cheetah when it catches the gazelle. It was a thing of beauty, pure instinct and skill, pure baseball the way it should be.

Smooth, that is what I have been waiting to talk about, the thing Ken Griffey Jr. is known for.. his sweet, smooth swing. His swing was smoother than Bill Clinton hitting on an intern, and his stance never changed once throughout his career. He would stand there with a slight knee bend, hips turned in, elbow up with the bat at shoulder level rotating it slightly. His bat was Potential energy just waiting to be converted to Kinetic energy, the pitch would come and in the blink of an eye he would decide if he was going to swing, what kind of pitch it was, and where its location would be. Then he would uncork a swing so smooth that it looks like he is barely even swinging the bat, as if he were taking batting practice off a high school pitcher before the game. He would make contact and the ball would jump off of the bat like a rubber bouncy ball bouncing off concrete, and as he finished with a one handed follow through he would drop the bat. He did this 630 times for a HR, simply beautiful to watch.

Its a sad day because Ken Griffey Jr. will never grace the field again, but its a great day because he is leaving as one of the greatest players of all time. He finished his career where it all started, with the Seattle Mariners, the team that drafted him number 1 overal in the 1987 draft, its only fitting that he heads to Cooperstown playing his final game for them. It wont be long after he arrives in Cooperstown that he will be considered a legend, and guys like me can sit and talk about how we got to watch arguably the best center fielder of all time, with the smoothest swing of all time. To quote the movie The Sandlot "Hero's are Remembered, But Legends Never Die." and neither will Ken Griffey Juniors game.