Galarraga told The Athletic last month that he would be interested in changing the record to document this as a perfect game. Joyce backed him up. This was not the first would-be perfect game broken up by a judgment call on the 27th batter. There was also Milt Pappas in , with a borderline pitch deemed a ball on , and Hooks Wiltse in , a victim of another bad call with two strikes. There was frustration in those cases, too. But there was no clear fix to demand.
For Galarraga, however, there was—replay review. Now, video review felt like a necessity—a permanent shift to ensure that this perfect game had not gone down in vain. Commissioner Bud Selig responded with an announcement that MLB would consider expanding video review.
It took years for it to finally happen, in , but when it did, it still fell in the shadow of Galarraga and Joyce. This, perhaps, was the final legacy of their imperfect game: A move to give every game a chance to be a little more perfect, or, at least, to be judged a little more perfectly.
Granholm, governor of the state of Michigan, do hereby declare Armando Galarraga to have pitched a perfect game. The end here did not look perfect. Maybe I missed the base? I don't run that hard? But when he called safe, I was doubting myself.
Alomar: "I didn't second-guess it at all, he was just completely out. But I had a different angle, right in front of the bag. Jimmy was behind the bag and as Galarraga was coming, he kind of occupied a little bit of a space for his view as he was running toward the base. So I think that's a confusion that he had. But, even so, he just beat it by a lot, man.
I don't know if Jimmy got there late or he got confused with a call because he knew right away he missed that call. He knew right away he missed that call. Leyland: "I still wasn't sure what he called, off the base or not, so then after going through that, I just yelled at him a little bit.
I didn't really get too demonstrative, to be honest with you. I told him he blew it, but you knew that he felt bad. You could almost tell instantly that he knew that he blew the call. I think he kind of froze and I think he saw out but he signaled safe, it was kind of like a mechanical thing.
Now, I don't know if there's any truth to that, that's just what I thought. Something told me to call him safe. Alomar: "Donald was so far back that I was just, like, shocked that Jimmy missed that play, because he's one of the best umpires in baseball and a very, very honest man. I think that he, to me, I felt like he meant to call out and he called safe. With a confused Donald on first base, a more confused Galarraga on the mound and boos beginning to rain down from an even more confused Comerica Park crowd, Galarraga stayed in the stretch.
Galarraga retired the 28th batter, Trevor Crowe, on a grounder to third on his 88th pitch to complete the Tigers' victory. It had taken just one hour and 44 minutes — the second-shortest game in Comerica Park history. As Galarraga's 88th pitch ended the game, with Cabrera still chirping, boos ringing louder and a team of angry Tigers headed his way, Joyce still believed he got the call right.
In that first interview, the Cleveland dugout and soon, the umpires'' room, an uncensored and unscripted story would emerge to become national news.
Riger: "I go out in the field and get Galarraga, he was humble and he was classy, and then I go back into the tunnel and I was gonna go to the Tigers clubhouse to get audio from Leyland and everybody else, and then it dawned on me: 'Is Joyce going to talk? Donald: "When I got back into the dugout, Mark Grudzielanek, Jake Westbrook and Austin Kearns, before I walked up the steps to get into the clubhouse, they were waiting there for me.
You need to make sure that Jim Joyce is very well-respected within the game, the last thing that we want you to do is to blow him up by saying, 'I knew I was out, he missed the call. We just want to make sure we handle this as respectfully as possible toward Jim and what their guy on the mound did. Galarraga: "To this point, I was wanting to see the replay. A couple people hold me on the field to try to interview, so I do a couple interviews.
As soon as I'm finished with the interview, I go straight to the clubhouse and try to see the replay and see what happened. Inside the Tigers clubhouse, seeing the replays the world had seen minutes earlier, the players were irate. Avila: "Back then, we had like, big tube TVs on the floor in the middle of the clubhouse, like those old-school tube TVs, and it was playing on there.
So everybody was kind of in the middle of the clubhouse watching it over and over again That was out. It was a good team, you know? Regardless about what happened that Jim Joyce make the call, I was really happy for me for many reasons: Because to throw a perfect game, it was something really special.
And the other thing, I need to keep my spot in that rotation. Avila: "Seeing Armando's reaction as that evening went on and Joyce's reaction, it became more of, yes, it's upsetting, but it went from anger to sympathy and understanding.
Galarraga: "I do interviews with a lot of people right there and Dave Dombrowski gets close to me and says, 'Hey, Jim Joyce is in the clubhouse. He cannot change it. He feels really bad. Do you think it's OK if you go over there and talk to him?
That night, it was Dave Hogg of the Associated Press. During the designated minute cool-down period, Riger asked Hogg to take his microphone in with him and the MLB representative went in to talk to Joyce. Riger: "So Hogg comes back and he's like, 'Dude, this doesn't happen, but he's letting you all in.
And he's pacing back and forth and we kind of had to stop him from pacing. It just came out. What came out was a master class in crisis management, from affording all reporters access in that small locker room to completely taking blame for missing the call to showing a human side that connected with people who have made mistakes.
Riger: "Whoever asked the first question, they said, 'Did you get it right? Is this thing going here? This is amazing. I was very aware of what was going on, very aware. Then when they leave. I can finally come back out into the locker room and then Leyland comes through the door, Jeff Jones comes through the door, Dave Dombrowski and then the last person comes through the door is Armando Galarraga.
He played baseball at Bowling Green with Jones. Jones: "He was devastated. I mean, I've never seen anybody so disappointed in themselves as he was. And somebody said Joyce wanted to see Leyland and I, so we went down there and we sat with him and he was in tears. I mean, I've never seen a guy so upset with themselves, and all he kept saying is, 'I ruined history' and this, that and the other thing.
I stayed down there with him until probably 1 o'clock in the morning, just talking, trying to make him feel better.
Schmakel: "The disappointment, the agitation, you know how it gets when you think you've been wronged and can't correct it. And then I do the umpires' room, so I went down to see him. And he had seen the replay, he knew he had blown the call and he was in a mood that you couldn't believe. He couldn't believe he made the call.
Dombrowski: "Really, the humanity part of it started after the game. When Armando came in to see him after the game and Jim was apologetic and was in tears and couldn't stop apologizing about how he felt he had hurt Armando and deprived him of his place in history and the two of them, Armando forgave Jim and Jim was apologetic.
Schmakel: "I tried to talk to Joyce, I told him I'd drive him home because he stays in Toledo when he umpires. He didn't take me up on the deal. He was Joyce left Comerica Park , hopped on Interstate 75 back to Toledo to stay with his mother for the night — a Joyce tradition in Detroit — and called his wife, Kay. Kay asked him if he was OK; he said no. She told him to stay off social media — Joyce had a Facebook account — and he said OK.
She had no clue. Galarraga, meanwhile, had left hours earlier, driving his Range Rover to his house in Royal Oak. His wife had left Comerica Park probably a half-hour ahead of him to let their puppy, Panzona, out of the cage.
Galarraga was hungry. My phone was ringing with no stop. It was nice and quiet. In Ohio, Joyce could not sleep. Those were the worst days of his personal life; this was the worst day of his professional life. Along that line, during that morning of darkness, Joyce had a realization: He was scheduled to work home plate in the series final, a day game.
On June 2, Armando Galarraga threw a perfect game. While the record might not show it as one, since umpire Jim Joyce ruled Jason Donald safe at first, even Joyce admitted his mistake the following day, upon seeing the replay. This is the story. His one caveat? Had the game been scored properly, and ruled a perfect game, it would have made MLB history. It would have come mere days after Roy Halladay pitched his May 29th perfect game against the Florida Marlins, and would have been the third perfect game in less than a month, with Dallas Braden having thrown one against the Rays on May 9th.
It would have been the first season in MLB history with three perfect games now has that historic record. One bad call changed history, not just for Galarraga — who left the Tigers after that season and was never a dominant starter again — or for Joyce — who became synonymous with his own mistake — but for baseball as a whole.
Joyce himself was able to admit the gaffe on reviewing video, and were it to happen now, the call would have been overturned and Galarraga awarded what he had earned.
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