Maybe baseball doesn't want "perfection"

I don't know what is more embarrassing: 1) an umpire blowing a call that would have sealed a pitcher's perfect game, or 2) major league baseball being on the threshold of its third perfect game within the first three months of the season.
When I was a kid, the perfect game was a most elusive gem. You might expect it as often as a rare comet.
No-hitters are special but not nearly so rare. A no-hitter simply means allowing zero hits, so batters can reach by other means and no blemish is applied. A pitcher could even lose the game.
There's one very clear criterion for pitching the unicorn-like perfect game: facing the minimum number of batters. For a nine-inning game, that would be 27. An error by a teammate would spoil everything.
Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was a hair's breadth from the feat recently when an umpire's call intervened. A harmless ground ball seemed to be handled just fine by the Tigers. It wasn't a wholly routine play, though, because the pitcher had to scramble to cover first base. The camera angle from behind first base seemed to suggest the throw beat the runner. This has truly become the consensus.
From the pitcher's side it's really not all that clear. I painstakingly studied the play from that angle and found this play not to be so cut and dried, when you consider all the elements that go into declaring an out.
I sort of wish umpire Jim Joyce hadn't capitulated so readily in the firestorm that developed in the aftermath. It seems so depressing to have the veteran umpire (just one year younger than yours truly) so unabashedly saying "I blew it."
Joyce was standing just a few feet from the first base bag. I'm puzzled why he wouldn't at least give the benefit of the doubt to the defensive team given what was at stake.
"Just punch him out," Willie Geist of MSNBC TV's "Morning Joe" said the next morning.
If it seems puzzling, maybe we should peel through the surface and speculate. Maybe major league baseball isn't so thrilled at the idea of a succession of unicorn-like perfect games, which could turn that animal into a more pedestrian type. There's also the issue of whether fans really want to see that much defense.
Maybe Joyce and his crew wanted to make sure there wasn't a scintilla of doubt about a particular play in order to have the third perfect game of the season. It's conspiratorial, yes, but it's an explanation for why Joyce would "go against the grain" as it were. (Conspiracy theories have always been permitted on "I Love Morris.")
For the short term, fans wanted to see history. The question is whether this would become a watered-down type of history, making one wonder how the powers-that-be tinker with the game. It's a fact they do tinker with it, as when they lowered the pitching mound for the 1969 season.
These pitching perfectos would be remindful of the frequent home runs of the McGwire-Sosa era - too much of a good thing as the repetitiveness set in. McGwire-Sosa (and throw in Barry Bonds) did have the short-term effect of bringing baseball back after the catastrophic 1994 strike.
The '94 strike taught me to live a normal life in summertime without stats and standings to peruse all the time. The home run derby of McGwire-Sosa injected enough of a thrill to pull enough fans back into the fold to where they'd at least pay attention again.
I can live without it. And I'd be scared to again invest emotionally in the game when the rug could get pulled out from under me (a la '94).
The home run derby of the steroid era is dimming in our collective memory. Home runs seem much more earned now. So now we see pitchers like Galarraga in control, having honed their craft through years when the steroid threats were still looming at the plate. In other words, pitchers became that much sharper. They are still showing that sheen, while hitters seem to have become more mortal.
We see this vividly with Galarraga having nearly tossed the third perfect game of the season. Prior to this year, never in the modern era had two perfect games been thrown in the same season!
Is this the new "rush" that fans are expecting now? Dominant pitching instead of the ball flying out of the park? If yes, they're getting their wish with the new phenom pitcher with the Washington Nationals. They can also expect to see games that don't last nearly as long.
The movie "Bobby" about the assassination of Robert Kennedy included a character who had a coveted ticket for a game that would have Don Drysdale pitching. Drysdale was striving to continue a miraculous unscored-upon streak. He and Sandy Koufax were formidable pitchers for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Drysdale's streak came during what came to be called "The Year of the Pitcher."
Fans got bored with all that pitching success. To this day I'm mystified why adjustments couldn't have been made during 1968 to inject a little more offense. It was a tumultuous and tragic year for America. But that guy with the ticket in "Bobby" just wanted to enjoy baseball and baseball history. He was a humble kitchen worker, probably Hispanic. Legal or illegal? Nobody talked about that much back then.
The fans at the recent Galarraga showcase wanted to share in the same thrill as sought by that kitchen guy.
The news Monday morning had umpire Joyce receiving some sort of umpiring excellence honor. That's OK. He's a "middle boomer" like me so I root for him. But he can't hold a candle to the umpire character played by Leslie Nielsen in the movie "Naked Gun." Maybe what we needed on that close play at first was the Nielsen character's rapier-like eye and flamboyant gesture declaring the batter "out!"
Does anyone else find it amusing to see Nielsen in a non-comedic role from his heyday of serious acting (like in "The Poseidon Adventure")? Don't you instantly want to imagine him reciting lines like in the movie "Airplane?" Isn't this now a big distraction in those older movies? It's a testament to Nielsen's talent that he could be so effective both in serious and pure comedic roles. As an umpire he was not to be topped.
The Galarraga-Joyce controversy surely elevates the replay proposal again for reversing calls that seem errant. This is never as easy to apply as it might seem. Why do you think the NFL took so long and then carefully put one toe in the water at a time, as it were? There's a gap between theory and practice.
Tags applied on runners as the runners' feet arrive at a base could never be clearly adjudicated by replay. You'd need about three different angles on some of these. It could become a Pandora's box.
As long as there's no strike or work stoppage in big league ball, I'd be satisfied with the basic product, even though my emotional attachment was permanently severed due to the 1994 strike. It's all for the better anyhow because emotionally rooting for sports teams sows seeds of letdown, and it's fundamentally immature.
I don't shed tears about the "Drew Pearson push-off" anymore. And I sat there sober and contained when Brett Favre made one of his "Bad Brett" plays (the devastating interception) against the New Orleans Saints in last year's NFC title game.
Life goes on. If only the same could have been said for Robert Kennedy.
-Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com