Bad Calls

The call that went against ex-Natto farmhand Galarraga was pretty horrendous last night. One of the guys traded to the Rangers for Soriano got hosed and everyone knew it. But that was not even the worst call this week. The Nationals bore that, even if a perfect game was not on the line. A playoff spot down the road may be, but there are 162 games to even that out, and hopefully the umps do.

The glut of perfect games is interesting. You might be able to call it "the year of the pitcher" with the warm-up hype for Chapman's debut in Cincinnati, Jimenez's brilliance, the even bigger hype for Strasburg's call-up, and the three perfect games in three weeks when there had never been two in the same season before. However, the umps are making it the year of the ump instead. Maybe Rob Dibble homerisms on MASN are getting to me, but there have been way too many bad calls in the games I have seen this year. Blubbering Joe West needs to keep his mouth shut and just ump. When Ozzie Guillen comes out of an argument looking like the sane one you need to reassess the way you are doing things. Last night's game has put bad calls under a microscope, but it certainly did not effect the game as much as Denkinger's call that stole the '85 Fall Classic from the Cardinals or the games in the '09 Eastern Conference semi-finals in the NHL that the refs gave away. It did not even effect the game as much as Tuesday nights Nats game.

Everyone can call Galarraga's performance perfect because unlike the ump Joyce's, it was. The easy way to solve that problem is to have Selig reverse it. Even if Selig goes by his own precedent of being gutless and doesn't reverse, it will go down in history as a perfect game. There is no such thing as the history book anymore, there is the history new media, and that is what the next generation will look at. They will look at the perfect game with an asterisk next to it, click on the link, and decide for themselves. When they see the asterisk next to Bonds name for home run king, they will click on the picture of Bonds as a rookie and compare it to post-steroids, and come to the conclusion that the home run record rests at 755.

What is tougher to asterisk is division standings. The Nats have been hosed on bad on balls and strikes all year long. You don't get those calls when you are a team that has lost over 200 games in two years. The check-swing on Berkman Tuesday night was atrocious; that was strike 3 with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, game over. Instead we had a gutless call by umpire Hohn, who the previous day engaged Roy Oswalt and tossed him. That was a questionable call that was meant to protect his fragile machismo when Questech can easily do his job for him behind the plate. To rule twice against the Astros would have made getting out of Houston difficult for him, but having a clear line of sight down the third base line on Berkman's swing and calling the play right is his job, not looking like a tough guy. Instead, he made the wrong call twice, the game went on, Berkman singled home the tying and winning runs, and it went into the books as a Nats loss with little fanfare. If the Nats miss the wild card by a game, that is the biggest blown call of the year. Riggleman is also to blame for not getting in his Hohn's smug face immediately, or at the very least the next game for anything. Instead, the Nats laid down a stinker last night when a wild-card contending team should be beating up on the Astros right now.

After Joyce's call last night, everyone handled the situation as well as they could. Leyland and the entire Tiger's organization got in Joyce's "Tombstone"-extra-mustachioed face and let him have it. He stuck by his call until he saw the replay, then went to Galarraga in tears apologizing. And every Tiger including Galarraga forgave him, calling him a class act and human. Nothing was perfect last night except Galarraga. And the new media record book will attest to it. We will see if the other bad calls made by the umps this year will sort themselves out as we get into September.