We take time today from our regularly scheduled bickering to recognize a small miracle. In today’s world, a small miracle will have to do.
Our story begins with a perfect game that wasn’t perfect. And it ends with an unhappy ending that turned improbably and achingly happy.
In between, we had a chance for a do-over — maybe the least-afforded gift in life — a chance to make wrong into right, to make justice from injustice. And where the miracle comes is that, in rejecting the chance for a do-over, we received the best and most redemptive gift possible.
You know the story. It will be told for generations, parent to child, handed down as if part of a sacred text. It’s a story of forgiveness. It’s a story of taking responsibility. It’s a story of good sportsmanship, a concept we feared had gone the way of chivalry and the $5 beer.
It’s a story, of course, of baseball, the sport that is routinely served up as a metaphor for life but rarely used as a metaphor for reconciling the irreconcilable.
Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers who is clinging to a spot in the big leagues, has a night of nights. He is literally unhittable. Batter after batter. Inning after inning. In baseball, it’s considered bad luck to talk about a no-hitter during a no-hitter. But with small miracles, there are different rules. People started to call each other, to say that it might happen — and in Detroit, where good things happen too rarely.
Because it’s baseball, where the record book is, in fact, a sacred text, we know there have been only 20 perfect games — 27 batters up, 27 batters down — dating to the mid-19th century. But if Galarraga got his, that would make three perfect games in a month. It seemed like an omen. It seemed as if something was being foretold — but what?
The world looked no different. The same Middle East troubles. The same, never-ending oil spill. Another round of politicians acting stupidly. Paul McCartney dissing George Bush. Bush praising waterboarding. You don’t need a replay here.
We are raised to be wary of the perfect. We are warned not to fly too close to the sun. How do you measure perfection anyway? Is it da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” or is it Picasso’s “Guernica”? Sports are different. Perfection is measurable. In baseball, all is written down and remembered. It’s the game even better in the imagining than in the watching, a game you know with your eyes closed.
And so, there are two outs in the ninth, the ball hit slowly toward first, the pitcher racing from the mound to the bag, the umpire taking his position, watching the runner’s feet and listening for the sound of the ball hitting the glove. Jim Joyce, a big-league umpire for 22 years, has made this call thousands of times. The runner is clearly out. Joyce clearly calls him safe.
Where there should be joy, there is confusion. Everyone knows the truth — perfection had been spoiled by a blown call — and every video replay offers proof. Galarraga could do nothing but smile in disbelief.
And so the calls immediately went up for baseball to embrace more instant replay, swearing that more technology was the answer. But baseball is not football. Baseball is the game in which Matt Holliday, in the fever of Rocktober, races around third, dives for home, misses the plate and is called safe. The Rockies win and all is right with the world. It’s the game that embraces the so-called human element, meaning failure.
In baseball, the ball through Bill Buckner’s legs is as memorable as Carlton Fisk willing the home run ball fair. And baseball now has Jim Joyce admitting he didn’t just blow “a” call but a “history” call. He found Galarraga to apologize, and, in maybe a large miracle, Galarraga not only accepted the apology but embraced it. “Nobody’s perfect,” Galarraga kept saying, except that that was the perfect thing to say.
Meanwhile, the fans wanted commissioner Bud Selig to step in and rule that what happened had never happened, to erase injustice, to make the imperfect perfect again. Selig tried to dodge the issue, and, in the end, he did nothing. Doing nothing, this once, was perfect. For once, we could handle the truth.
In baseball, they play nearly every day. The next day is for redemption, for washing away the sins of the night before. It’s a game of short memories and of second chances.
The day after this game was for something more. You’ve seen the replays of this moment too. Before the game, Galarraga brings the lineup card out to the umpires. The home plate umpire is, of course, Jim Joyce. That’s how these stories are written.
We see Joyce wipe away tears. We see Galarraga comfort him. We see backs patted. And backs patted back. Everyone is crying or smiling or both.
And if you’re wondering how to fit this into a record book, you can’t. But our story ends this way: Now we know it’s possible to be even better than perfect.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
