I don’t mean to be flip about a topic that generated so much serious commentary from sports observers across the land, including those in high office, but Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game Wednesday night reminded me of the scene from “Animal House” when Boone, Otter, Pinto and Flounder return from their weekend road trip with the car entrusted to Flounder by his big brother in shambles.
“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes,” Otter says. “You f***ed up; you trusted us.”
The point being: We all make mistakes; we all occasionally go against our better judgment. The consequences are relative. On one hand, you can bust a pitcher’s perfect game. On another, you can bust an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The way you respond is also of great import. You can fess right up and make immediate amends, as Joyce did, or you can bumble around British Petroleum-style while millions of gallons of crude pour daily into the ocean.
In the wake of Joyce’s mistake, a predictable cry went up for expanded replay review in baseball and a reverse of the call. Major League Baseball did right in brushing aside the latter pitch. Reversing the call would set bad precedent, plain and simple.
Hopefully, MLB will also resist the urge to expand replay review beyond home run calls. Does replay weed out human error? Of course it does, but it also sucks the life out of human endeavor, which by definition makes it a little less than human.
And that’s what matters most. We could put all our swell technology to use and eliminate all human error from our games, which by definition ultimately means eliminating human presence entirely because there is a little Flounder in all of us. And so, in the end, we would reduce human competition to — what, video games?
A science fiction writer could have a field day. Any worker displaced by machine will say it’s all too real.
The true humanist looks at what happened in the wake of Joyce’s admitted mistake and Galarraga’s graceful acceptance of it and says there is the best solution you can ever hope for.
Joyce will be haunted by his mistake for the rest of his life and he knows it, yet the very next day he was back in the arena. Galarraga, with his empathy, won’t get his perfect game, but is likely to be remembered equally, if not more so, than the 20 pitchers who did.
“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes,” Otter says. “You f***ed up; you trusted us.”
The point being: We all make mistakes; we all occasionally go against our better judgment. The consequences are relative. On one hand, you can bust a pitcher’s perfect game. On another, you can bust an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The way you respond is also of great import. You can fess right up and make immediate amends, as Joyce did, or you can bumble around British Petroleum-style while millions of gallons of crude pour daily into the ocean.
In the wake of Joyce’s mistake, a predictable cry went up for expanded replay review in baseball and a reverse of the call. Major League Baseball did right in brushing aside the latter pitch. Reversing the call would set bad precedent, plain and simple.
Hopefully, MLB will also resist the urge to expand replay review beyond home run calls. Does replay weed out human error? Of course it does, but it also sucks the life out of human endeavor, which by definition makes it a little less than human.
And that’s what matters most. We could put all our swell technology to use and eliminate all human error from our games, which by definition ultimately means eliminating human presence entirely because there is a little Flounder in all of us. And so, in the end, we would reduce human competition to — what, video games?
A science fiction writer could have a field day. Any worker displaced by machine will say it’s all too real.
The true humanist looks at what happened in the wake of Joyce’s admitted mistake and Galarraga’s graceful acceptance of it and says there is the best solution you can ever hope for.
Joyce will be haunted by his mistake for the rest of his life and he knows it, yet the very next day he was back in the arena. Galarraga, with his empathy, won’t get his perfect game, but is likely to be remembered equally, if not more so, than the 20 pitchers who did.
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