~STORY OF THE WEEK~
DISASTER IN DETROIT

UMPIRE BOTCHES PERFECT GAME AS JUSTICE IS BETRAYED

When history is in your grasp, the easy thing to do is embrace it. With two outs in the ninth inning in Detroit on Wednesday, the first-base umpire, Jim Joyce, could have called the Cleveland Indians’ Jason Donald out on a close play at first base. Make a fist, raise a forearm, and Armando Galarraga becomes the 21st pitcher — and third in the last four weeks — to throw a perfect game. The courageous call is the one Joyce made. It was so obviously wrong that Joyce, a major league umpire since 1989, clearly had no desire to help Galarraga make history. He simply called the play as he saw it. The problem, of course, is that Joyce’s decision is easily the most egregious blown call in baseball over the last 25 years. The last call that was so important and so horribly botched was in the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, when another first-base umpire, Don Denkinger, called Jorge Orta of the Kansas City Royals safe at first. Replays showed that St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Todd Worrell had touched the bag, with ball in hand, before Orta reached base. Three outs from clinching a title, the Cardinals fell apart and lost the World Series the next night. Galarraga will never get his perfect game back. His center fielder, Austin Jackson, had kept it alive for him on the first pitch of the top of the ninth, racing on a full sprint to the distant warning track at Comerica Park, fully extending his left arm for a twisting, over-the-shoulder catch. After Mike Redmond grounded out to shortstop, Donald bounced a ball between first and second. Miguel Cabrera fielded it and threw to Galarraga covering. The ball got there in time. So did Galarraga. He seemed to catch the ball near the top of the webbing; perhaps Joyce did not hear the telltale thwack of ball meeting leather before he heard Donald’s foot cross the base. He spread his arms — safe, an infield single. The record will show that Donald reached base, even advancing as far as third while Galarraga pitched from the windup and Cabrera yelled at Joyce. Galarraga retired the next hitter to complete a 3-0 shutout, the first of his rather ordinary major league career. The Tigers swarmed Joyce after the game, howling in protest, but they have no recourse; instant replay is allowed only for home runs. Galarraga became the 10th pitcher in history to lose a perfect game with two out in the ninth inning and the first since the Yankees’ Mike Mussina in 2001. The last perfect game to be lost under similar circumstances was in 1972, when the Chicago Cubs’ Milt Pappas walked Larry Stahl of the San Diego Padres on a 3-2 pitch. Bruce Froemming was the plate umpire at Wrigley Field that day who called ball four. Pappas flew into a rage, and though he got a no-hitter, he has never wavered in criticizing Froemming, who retired in 2007 after a 37-year career. “The pitch was outside,” Froemming said Wednesday night in a telephone interview. “I didn’t miss the pitch; Pappas missed the pitch. You can look at the tape. Pappas, the next day, said, ‘I know the pitch was outside, but you could have given it to me.’ That pitch has gotten better over the years. That pitch is right down the middle now.” In the next day’s Chicago Tribune, Pappas was quoted as saying, “The pitches were balls. They were borderline but balls. Froemming called a real good game.” Pappas has since said he was being diplomatic to avoid a fine for criticizing an umpire. In a 2007 interview with ESPN, Pappas suggested that Froemming should have given him the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of history. “I still to this day don’t understand what Bruce Froemming was going through in his mind at that time,” Pappas said. “Why didn’t he throw up that right hand like the umpire did in the perfect game with Don Larsen?” He added: “It’s a home game in Wrigley Field. I’m pitching for the Chicago Cubs. The score is 8-0 in favor of the Cubs. What does he have to lose by not calling the last pitch a strike to call a perfect game?” What Froemming would have lost is integrity, even if only he knew. Umpires can show no bias,
to a team or to a situation. Froemming never worked the plate for a perfect game, but he never manufactured one, either. As badly as Joyce missed his call in Detroit on Wednesday, he also did what he thought was right. That is the umpire’s job, even if it was no consolation to Joyce. “I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce told reporters in Detroit. “I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay. It was the biggest call of my career.” Galarraga told reporters that Joyce apologized to him after the game, adding that he had no instinct to argue the call. “He probably felt more bad than me," Galarraga said. Smiling, he added, “Nobody’s perfect.” (NY Times)