Sadly, Human Error Is Just Part of the Game

In response to Wednesday night’s almost perfect game by Armando Galarraga, Keith Olbermann posted on his blog that Commissioner Bud Selig should reverse the call and give Galarraga the perfect game.

While this may seem like a good idea, it sets a bad precedent.

Do I feel bad for Armando Galarraga and for Jim Joyce? Yes. It is a shame that this happened, but bad calls are part of the game.

Humans make errors and as long as baseball does not have instant replay, these types of things are likely to happen.

If Selig overrules this call people would be asking for calls to be overturned all the time. People always complain about umpires, it is just unfortunate that this call happened at such a critical point in a critical game.

However, if this same call had been blown in any other game tonight, people would not care. The fans of the teams affected would be mad, but there would be no national outcry. This type of thing happens. It is what happens when humans are involved and computers are not.

The other thing that bothers me about this is that if the call had been missed the other way, (runner called out when he was in fact safe) I highly doubt people would be screaming to have the perfect game removed from Galarraga.

This is part of the reason that perfect games are so hard to come by. Armando Galarraga pitched a brilliant game Wednesday night, but it should not be listed among the 20 perfect games in MLB history.

 On the bright side, this will hopefully move baseball closer towards an expanded use of instant replay.