Feelings, One Year Later

One year to the evening, that is, after Armando Galarraga's imperfect game.


The night when Armando retired the first 26 Indians in order, and then got Jason Donald to hit a grounder to Cabrera, who threw to the pitcher covering in plenty of time for the 27th out. First base umperor Jim Joyce called Donald safe.


After the game and into the next day, players, umps, Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland, and the media sob sisters, talked, and wrote, about their feelings, and cried and hugged so much that the whole scene reminded me of the Ricki Lake show. 


Give me a break. 


It was obvious to sixty-odd players and coaches, 17,000 fans at the game, and everyone watching on TV -- everyone, in fact, except they guy who was closest to the play -- that Donald was out. 


The baseball fan wonders how certain pitchers, and manages, from the recent past would have reacted if the umps took a perfect game away from them. Don Drysdale, Billy Martin, where ARE you when we need you? 


Everyone makes mistakes, Leyland admitted during the postgame cry. (Great. Go out to argue a play after that, and see how far you get.) 


There were so many bad calls in Tiger games, that went against the Tigers, in just the rest of June that, finally, the skipper had to get himself run, if only to tell the world enough was enough (on the 29th, in Atlanta, arguing balls that Ray Charles would have ruled strikes). 


Last weekend, the Twins lost a game when four umperors reversed a call, and backpedaled faster and better than Richard Nixon ever did. They couldn't throw Ron Gardenhire out fast enough. After the game, feelings weren't discussed, and no hugs were exchanged. 


Baseball isn't a game played by two teams of nine young girls, officiated by four middle-aged women, whose objective is for one team, after nine innings, to accumulate more feelings than the other.

Not even in San Francisco, where manager Bruce Bochy and GM Brian Sabean need to be measured for evening gowns after whining about the loss of catcher Buster Posey for the season on a collision at the plate, in a play that everyone outside SF has called part of the game.

Top 12th, score tied, you have to score the run. Scott Cousins did. A young girl would have asked permission, let herself get tagged out rather than hurt the catcher, and after that complained that the game dragged on so long.