When I heard my wife, who can’t tell the difference between a shortstop and a hot dog vender, discussing a recent baseball blown-call controversy with her grandmother, who is a Yankee fan, I just sensed it did not bode well for the Tigers. Sure enough, a quick trip to Googleville brought up the image of a bemused Venezuelan pitcher named Armando Galarraga sporting a big D over his heart and a sweet smile of bemusement on his face at what had just been done to him.
What had been done? He’d been robbed. And beaten, and pissed on. Not so much by the umpire who’d admitted he’d inexplicably “kicked the shit” out of the call (Inexplicable? Let me explicate it for you. It was an electro-chemical glitch in the softening folds of the cerebral cortex of an aging man hopped up on adrenaline. I get them all the time) but by the game itself.
One could postulate on the impetus for the ump’s call. Perhaps he’d grown tired of the current spate of perfect games being tossed. This was (not would’ve been, was) #3. Perhaps it was because he, a native of Ohio and probable fan of the Indians since childhood, didn’t want to see his Tribe ignominiously taken down. Whatever the input data, the output went something like, “Omeegod, ohmeegod, ohmeeGOD, SAAAAAAAFE! OMMINA OMMINA OMMINA!!!”
But you know, as everyone and his grandmother has since observed, most of the principal characters have exhibited laudable grace throughout the debacle. They may even have taught us something about life (it frequently sucks), and it could be argued that more good will come of this mess than the mere addition of another statistical anomaly to the already bloated books of America’s favorite pastime.
It is still an abomination. And the problem is with the mindset of the men who adjudicate the game, which isn’t a game so much as a monstrous business, the business of entertaining its fans. Games are what kids do in the back yard, and even kids have the common sense to call a do-over when they’re not sure of what just happened. See, kids understand the fundamental notion of justice.
There are times I just hate old men, and I’m one of them. Chief among our disreputable traits is how we cling pathetically to any semblance of righteous authority as our faculties dribble from our drawers into an embarrassing puddle for others to mop up. Observe as the squad of umpires resume their field positions, admonishing all to behave as if nothing iniquitous has just taken place. A member of their goon squad has just raped a civilian and it’s, “Move along folks. Nothing to look at here. Everybody back to your popcorn.” Union thugs, all of them. Have I mentioned that I hate unions, and I’m a member of one?
The first photo used to validate the proper winner of a horse race was taken in 1888. This is not a typo. 1888. My dead father, who sired me at an advanced age, wasn't yet around to have had a shot at processing the negative.
Is any further consideration required? Of course not, except that it's fun. Even hockey, a frostbitten battle contested by brute monsters with nobody watching, assures itself that wrongs are righted. When not employing primal bloodletting, it uses this thing called modern technology. Does this change the nature of the game? Yes. It makes it better. Even the fans (I lied. There are some), cave-dwellers all, wait patiently for the proper call to be announced. Goal!!! Justice served. Toss the octopi.
We watched a while back as the ensconced powers of football attempted to make instant replay fail. I remember zebra’d officials huddling for days, faces planted in cardboard tunnels, pondering over what we’d seen for ourselves fourteen times between commercials (I’m thinking they were actually playing PacMan), attempting to bore us into submission while still fudging the call, as if to convince us, “See? It doesn’t work.” What didn’t work was their preemptive, petrified mindset, the pussies.
The Winter Olympics are now a memory, and what I remember most was the technology that showed racers competing with timepieces armed to the microsecond, the contestants’ progress against phantom adversaries measured by a light bar. Fascinating. How else do you do it, when the virtually identical efforts of professional athletes, and they’re all professionals after sixth grade now, surpass the limits of human senses to measure their performance?
Baseball has managed to carve some progress out of its calcified history. The American League has even made the controversial call of replacing the anemic pitcher (a phenomenon I still truly do not comprehend) at the plate with a more accomplished, hence entertaining batter. A travesty, you say? Have another jumbo beer.
A fellow named Don Denkinger knows full well what a bad call can do. One of his during the 1985 World Series in all likelihood awarded the championship to the wrong team. There’s a headline for you: Wrong Team Wins World Series. Great copy, bad business plan. Mr. Denkinger has chimed in on the subject, and he wants to see change.
But what’s to be said about this Bud Selig character? I say he’s a dirty-diapered sissy-boy with his diminutive nuts in a sling over some antiquated notion of purity. In the halls of jurisprudence judges are allowed to overturn the most sacred of decisions, those made by a jury of one’s peers. The nerve of those guys, huh? They know how to spot a bunch of angry men screwing the pooch.
Speaking of things sacrosanct, I remember the use of the word by some goober of a political commentator in reference to our Constitution. You know what, numb-nuts? The Constitution serves the people, not the other way around. When it is found deficient we amend it, which we the people have been doing with amazing alacrity since John Hancock conspired to use up all the available space on the document.
You want to live nostalgically in some bygone era, Cy? Lubricate more heavily while you lounge in front of your plasma wall. And if you really care, hop into your Studebaker time machine dialed into the pre-TV era, when America migrated to the ballparks to watch a bunch of white guys stumble around on a patchwork of divots and dirtballs. Now those were the good old days. Maybe we could get the umps to agree to a pay cut commiserate with the sport’s Golden Era.
I for one do not wish to see Mr. Joyce’s call overturned. It is too late for that. The train needs to pull away from the station after you’ve torn the conductor a new back door for closing his in your face. What I wish to see is the game repaired. Other sports need it as well. Get rid of the PAT in football. It is a useless forgone conclusion. Oh yes it is. Get rid of anything that runs poorly, like that Studebaker. And since it’s the season, start with baseball.
