To his credit, Joyce was very apologetic after the game, admitting after he saw the replay that he had gotten it wrong. Most umpires would never admit their mistakes, but Joyce personally apologized to Galarraga. A classy move that may have made him feel a little better, but it's not enough to give back what he was robbed of - and nothing will.
If not for that blown call then Galarraga would have joined Roy Halladay and Dallas Bradan on the list of pitchers to throw a perfect game this season. Think about that, there had only been 18 perfect games in the history of the game going into this season. It's barely June and we've already seen two this season, and nearly (should have) seen a third. That's unheard of. Galarraga wasn't the only one that was robbed that night. Baseball fans around the world were robbed of seeing history.
Baseball is a game played, managed and umpired by humans. Humans make mistakes, and as Joyce himself admits, this was one of those mistakes. The controversial story has made headlines across media outlets as the story of the day (trumping even the retirement of Ken Griffy Jr.), which brings to light an even bigger issue. So far this season we've seen too many headlines of controversial issues involving umpires.
Last week it was umpire Bill Hohn who ejected Houston pitcher Roy Oswalt in the third inning of a game for what he apparently believed was a sign of disrespect by Oswalt. As Oswalt explained after the game, he looked away from the umpire and mumbled something to himself in disgust after issuing a walk on a close pitch with a full count. Hohn mistook this for Oswalt arguing the call and stepped forward to warn the pitcher. Oswalt called back that he wasn't even talking to the umpire, to which point Hohn made the call to eject him. Talk about a short fuse! Even if Oswalt was trying to argue, it wasn't a heated face to face confrontation that usually gets a player or manager tossed. You can't give a guy a quicker hook than that, which only leaves us to believe that Hohn either misheard Oswalt and thought he had really said something extremely disrespectful or that the umpire was just being a hot head and made an emotional call based more on his own pride than common sense. The league has already stepped in and said that Hohn will be getting a "stern" talk about his actions. That's great, but it still doesn't help Oswalt or the Astros.
Has any umpire made more headlines this season than Joe West? Last week he was at it again for ejecting White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and pitcher Mark Buehrle for arguing two separate balk calls against the pitcher. Note that most people can barely describe what a balk looks like, and across the league umpires can't even agree on what a balk is, but replays didn't show anything out of the ordinary from what Buehrle was doing. The rule is put in place to say that a pitcher must not attempt to deceive a base runner by faking a move toward home plate. If an umpire calls a balk on the pitcher, all base runners automatically advance one base. It's not called very often, and to see it twice in one game against the same pitcher is even more rare. So you can't blame Buerhle for being upset with the calls. He actually had to be restrained by teammates after being ejected by West. Guillen and Buerhle were both fined after the game on top of their ejections, but West was also fined, showing that the league was not pleased with how he handled the situation.
West also caused a stir earlier in the season with his comments about the slow pace of games between the Red Sox and Yankees. He called it pathetic and embarrassing that the two teams are notorious for games that last well over three hours (league average is a little under three hours) when they meet. He has a point about shortening the time of games by limiting instances of players stepping out of the box or waiting too long to throw a pitch, but all teams are guilty of that. The main reasons the Red Sox and Yankees games take so long is because they are two great evenly matched teams. They both have great offensive teams that are capable of putting runners on base and scoring runs. They are teams known for taking a lot of pitches and working the count to build up the opposing pitcher's pitch count. Asking them to change their philosophy just to speed up the game is absurd. The underlying argument about speeding up the game was a good one, but the way it came across only succeeded in burying the message under a backlash of comments from fans, players and the media that were offended by his brash statement. In the end all West really succeeded in doing was embarrassing himself.
As more of these umpire complaints continue to build the pressure will be on for Major League Baseball to do something about it. While nobody is suggesting that there is anything shady going on, much like the Tim Donaghy situation that embarrassed the NBA a couple years ago, but umpires need to be held more accountable for their calls. With the technology we have today we can review replays in slow motion while zooming in from multiple angles. We can track where the ball was thrown over the plate in relation to the strike zone. We have the tools to judge and grade an umpires performance, but it's done little to improve upon the decision making of the umpires. These umpires are people, and people make mistakes. We can never expect them to be perfect, but what we can expect is for them to do all they can do to make sure they gets the calls right. If that means using instant reply or relying more on assistance from the other umpires then so be it.
While the danger of expanding the use of instant replay is understood (just ask Joe West how much it will slow down the game) there are instances where it makes sense. Perhaps they could limit it to only a certain number of challenges per game, like they do in the NFL, or a replay could be called for based on a majority decision by the umpires in the game. It only takes a couple of minutes to take another look at the play. You're telling me that this is more time consuming than a player or manager getting ejected for getting in the umpires face to argue the call? Currently only a disputed home run can be reviewed. While I'm not suggesting that they start using replay to dispute called balls and strikes, there are certainly other areas of the game that could be open to review. That night in Detroit was one of those times.
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