The Armando Galarraga perfect game that Jim Joyce stripped from him has no doubt given rise to a number of different lede’s. Jim Joyce blew the call. Jim Joyce took a perfect game away from Galarraga, the Tigers, and their fans. Kill/Fire Jim Joyce. Make it right, Bud Selig. Implement instant replay. And so on. Armando Galarraga pitched one of the best games in Major League history, recording 28 27 outs on just 88 pitches in a game that took under two hours to complete, and he won’t get a single mention in the history books because of an egregious umpiring error. It all sounds so unfair and infuriating.
But Galarraga handled it with the utmost class and composure.
I don’t know many people who would have handled that missed call as calmly as Galarraga did. Instead of becoming irate, like every Tigers fan I know (myself included), Galarraga simply gave a sheepish grin and moved on as if he didn’t just have his name preemptively Bic Wite-Out’d from the MLB record books. He took the ball, stepped on the rubber, and coolly took care of hitter number 28 in five easy pitches to end a 3-0 complete game shutout win.
After the game, when teammate Gerald Laird and skipper Jim Leyland had to be restrained from getting at umpire Jim Joyce, Armando Galarraga moseyed his way through the high five line with the same expressionless face he rocked for the last two hours. As the fans continued to incessently boo Jim Joyce, Galarraga started to head off the field. On his way, he took off his hat and gave a (sarcastic?) wave to the still jeering crowd.
In his postgame interview on the field, all Galarraga could do was laugh. He was clearly still in shock, perhaps at how well he pitched, but most likely because he was just one proper call away from a perfect game – the third in the MLB in the last three weeks and the first in Tigers and Venezuelan history.
At that point, which he later admitted on Baseball Tonight, he didn’t know if Jason Donald was safe or indeed out. He honestly did not know. And that might explain why he kept his cool. Once he sees the replay, he’ll lose it, right?
Nope.
Even after he saw the replay in the clubhouse, and knew Jim Joyce was clearly wrong, Galarraga peacefully gave the benefit of the doubt to the erring umpire.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Galarraga said. Galarraga then revealed that a distraught Jim Joyce apologized, that he felt bad for Joyce, and actually gave Joyce a hug.
I don’t want to take anything away from Dallas Braden’s perfect game, or pass judgment on him, but a random quote I saw on Twitter from a writer at Baseball Prospectus kind of speaks volumes of just how classy Galarraga was in the midst of all this:
“Armando Galarraga showed more class in losing his perfect game than Dallas Braden showed in completing his.”
Can you imagine the uproar this would have caused with almost any other pitcher? I can pretty much guarantee that no pitcher would have had the kind of reserve Galarraga displayed on Wednesday night. Galarraga’s right to a degree, “nobody’s perfect,” but from pitch one all the way through the post-game interviews, for roughly three and a half hours, Armando Galarraga was without a doubt, 100% perfect. And not even Jim Joyce can take that away from him.
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