For good of the game, Selig needs to reverse ump's blown call

There are no do-overs in sports. Well, except in tennis, when they are called lets. When it comes to steroids in baseball, people often ask me, look, we know

Frank Deford | Jun 3, 2010

For good of the game, Selig needs to reverse ump's blown call /

There are no do-overs in sports. Well, except in tennis, when they are called lets.

When it comes to steroids in baseball, people often ask me, look, we know these guys cheated, why can't their records be eliminated from the rule books? And the answer is, yeah they cheated, and yeah we know it and yeah, some of them have even admitted it, but you can't unravel history. If you remove a Mark McGwire steroided home run, then you have to change the pitcher's ERA and the score of the game, and on and on and on back to Abner Doubleday inventing the game in Cooperstown -- and there goes the Hall of Fame. You can't remove Mark McGwire's home runs anymore than you can remove Mark McGwire. He happened.

Except . . . except: in baseball, like life, there is always the one exception. And here we have it. Yesterday, Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, retired the first 26 batters. He retired the 27th, too, but the umpire botched the call at first base and called the runner safe. So Galarraga lost his perfect game because of a brutal injustice.

(Then, just for the record, he got the next guy out, too. Game over . . . again.)

Now, the replay showed conclusively that Galarraga got the 27th batter out. Nobody in the world disputes that, including the distraught umpire, Jim Joyce, once he saw the replay.

Baseball uses replays only in very limited circumstances, because it is stupid. But that's another issue. The point is, we have replays even if baseball wants to play ostrich, and they prove conclusively: Galarraga got the 27th guy out at first base. The game was over. He had a perfect game.

Just as simple is what Commissioner Bud Selig should do: employ that fiat that comes with his position -- "for the good of the game" -- overrule the umpire, and give Galarraga what we all already know he has: a perfect game.

This is the one extraordinary case in all baseball history. If Selig simply says the game ends with the 27th batter out at first base -- which he was -- nothing else is affected. If it had been the 25th batter or the 26th, no, you couldn't do it. If there was any doubt at all about the call at first base, no, you couldn't do it. If anybody -- the umpire, the batter, Ebeneezer Scrooge -- if anybody in the world disputed it, no, you couldn't do it.

But there is no problem. Giving Galarraga his perfect game is the right thing to do, and it has no adverse affect, nor any affect on history. It's called a gimme, Mr. Commissioner.

There are even analogies. In simple individual sports, like track, when it has been determined, after the fact, that the winner was on drugs, he has simply been lifted out of the race. Justice was done.

Commissioner Selig can give us justice here. He can make everybody happy and hurt no one. For the good of the game. For the good of justice.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Published Jun 3, 2010

FRANK DEFORD

Frank Deford is among the most versatile of American writers. His work has appeared in virtually every medium, including print, where he has written eloquently for Sports Illustrated since 1962. Deford is currently the magazine's Senior Contributing Writer and contributes a weekly column to SI.com. Deford can be heard as a commentator each week on Morning Edition. On television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. He is the author of 15 books, and his latest,The Enitled, a novel about celebrity, sex and baseball, was published in 2007 to exceptional reviews. He and Red Smith are the only writers with multiple features in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Editor David Halberstam selected Deford's 1981 Sports Illustrated profile on Bobby Knight (The Rabbit Hunter) and his 1985 SI profile of boxer Billy Conn (The Boxer and the Blonde) for that prestigious anthology. For Deford the comparison is meaningful. "Red Smith was the finest columnist, and I mean not just sports columnist," Deford told Powell's Books in 2007. "I've always said that Red is like Vermeer, with those tiny, priceless pieces. Five hundred words, perfectly chosen, crafted. Best literary columnist, in any newspaper, that I've ever seen." Deford was elected to the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Six times at Sports Illustrated Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation's finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Deford has also been presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles; a Christopher Award; and journalism honor awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University; and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media," and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, "The world's greatest sportswriter." In broadcast, Deford has won a Cable Ace award, an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award for his television work. In 2005 ESPN presented a television biography of Deford's life and work, You Write Better Than You Play. Deford has spoken at well over a hundred colleges, as well as at forums, conventions and on cruise ships around the world. He served as the editor-in-chief of The National Sports Daily in its brief but celebrated existence. Deford also wrote Sports Illustrated's first Point After column, in 1986. Two of Deford's books, the novel, Everybody's All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis, have been made into movies. Two of his original screenplays have also been filmed. For 16 years Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, CT, with his wife, Carol. They have two grown children – a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught American Studies.