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Thursday, June 03, 2010
My brief take on “the call”
There are probably 20 similar (maybe a lot more) bad calls a year in MLB. I don’t see any reason to expect an umpire to make a bad call less frequently in a situation like that. In fact, given the pressure, you can probably expect the opposite (more blown calls). It was just an unfortunate fluke that a bad call happened to come in that situation, but sooner or later a bad call has to come in all important situations, including 2 outs in the 9th of a perfect game.
Joyce’s press conference was impressive to me. Galarraga’s reaction was ultra-impressive to me.
Some really stupid and ignorant comments from the Baseball Think Factory thread, some from their regulars:
Calling Joyce’s call “incompetence.” Incompetence by an umpire can only be measured by the total of the quality and quantity of an umpire’s mistakes over a long period of time, and even then, it might be a fluke that a good umpire makes a bunch of bad calls, just like a good hitter can make lots of outs in any finite time period. In any case, Joyce is generally considered a very good umpire, so one bad call can NOT make him incompetent. And I have seen many worse calls, whatever that even means.
Someone suggested he should be disciplined. That makes no sense at all.
Several people said that the OS should have ruled that an error. Also ridiculous. If the umpire rules the runner safe and no one made an obvious blunder, which no one did, then it is a hit, period.
At least one person said it was a bang-bang play. No mater how hard or easy you might have thought the call was or however close the umpire might have thought the play was, it cannot have been a bang-bang play, by definition. A bang-bang play, by definition, is one in which the call could have gone either way, or at least either call would have been reasonable, upon close examination, such as in a slow motion replay.
Several people, including my ex-college-mate Olbermann, said that Selig should declare it a perfect game. Also ridiculous. The umpire’s call is as much a part of the game as fielder’s not making errors. If they don’t want that to be the case, then they should have computers and robots or instant replay challenges. Until and unless they do, then the umpire’s fallible and sometimes wrong calls are part of the game.