Donald was out!

Reagan and I have been having a little argument. Donald was out. The moment Galarraga touched the base with the ball in his mitt, Donald was out. The umpire did not need to make the call for Donald to be out. However, the referee DID blow the call, so Donald got to stay on first and the official scorer called it a hit. More on the official scorer later.

Even though I think Donald was out, I have an issue with the dopey ESPN writer who is writing in this age of entitlement. Here's the link, if you want to give him a hit. Here is the article, with my comments in red, below:

Bud Selig can get the shrug back. Right here, right
now.
Mulligans aren't normally awarded in sports. Bill Buckner cannot get
that Mookie grounder
back, Scott Norwood
cannot get wide right back, and Greg Norman cannot get a hundred Sunday putts
back. [And that's as it should be.]
But Bud, this one's for you. Remember that shrug at the 2002 All-Star Game
in your very own Milwaukee backyard, where you threw those bony hands in the
air, slapped on your best Willy Loman expression, and told the finest baseball
players in the world their spirited 11-inning contest would end in a 7-7 tie?
You're getting a do-over, Bud, and here's a little unsolicited advice: Don't
shrug this second time around.
Invoke your best-interests-of-the-game powers
to make Armando Galarraga and
Jim Joyce and Jason Donald and
the rest of baseball whole. [WHAT?]
The imperfect man pitched the perfect game, Bud, just like the old newspaper
story said. The offending umpire, Jim Joyce, is in full agreement even as he
picks through the rubble and ash of a distinguished baseball life.
[+] Enlarge
Andy Lyons/Getty Images Bud Selig, we still remember the 2002 All-Star Game.
Make us forget it.
"It was the biggest call of my career," Joyce conceded as
he reportedly paced in his dressing room, "and I kicked the [stuff] out of it. I
just cost that kid a perfect game."
So this isn't only about granting
Detroit's Galarraga
his rightful corner of history, or about acknowledging that Galarraga caught Miguel Cabrera's
throw and put his foot on the first-base bag before Cleveland's Donald did the
same.
This is about freeing Joyce from the grim prison cell that will hold
him for the rest of his professional days. [Please.]
Don Denkinger can fill you in. He once told me on the
phone about his infamous blown call that turned the 1985 World Series, when he
ruled Kansas City's Jorge Orta safe at first before replays showed that the
Cardinals' Todd Worrell had beaten him to the bag.
"It's a
crushing feeling," said Denkinger, who received death threats and a
never-ending stream of hate mail from gamblers and fans. "You can't imagine what
a person feels when you're written about, talked about, and then they show 13
different angles of the call in slow motion."
Life isn't fair [That's right, life isn't fair.], but we like to
think of stadiums and arenas as places to go to escape life for a few hours.
Games are supposed to be fair. [But, they still aren't and can never
be completely fair. Human error happens.] What went down in Comerica Park on
Wednesday night was a million miles from fair. [Maybe so, but, the rules of the game were followed. The umpire
made his call. It was a bad call. There is nothing that can be done about it.
Worse things have happened. Should we go back and overturn every bad call? Has
any other perfect game ever been ruined by a bad call in the first inning? The
second? Should we scour through the history of all one hit games to determine
how many of those should be overturned? Why, all of a sudden, does nearly
everyone want to give this pitcher a perfect game after an umpire blew it for
him?]
So the expanded use of instant replay is the issue of
the day, the item atop the commissioner's morning agenda. Only there's no time
to measure the merits of . technology against the charms of a sport officiated by fallible
men.
That debate isn't going to help Galarraga, or Joyce, or millions of right-minded
baseball fans who need some healing ASAP. [Oh, boo hoo, millions of
right-minded men need some healing. What kind of entitlement crap are you
spouting? I tell you what, let's give everyone a participation trophy, too. Oh,
and we can't stop at just the players who got into the game, oh no, we have to
give participation trophies to the guys who were on the bench,
too.]
Selig shouldn't wait. Even the city of Cleveland would
be with him on this one. [Please don't presume that
the city of Cleveland would be with anyone on anything. They have been shit on
for 46 years. They have had their football team taken away from them by a lying
pig of a man who had no grasp of loyalty after owning the team for thirty years.
Cleveland fans could give a crap.]
He wouldn't be fighting a
powerful and antagonistic players union over the issue of performance-enhancing
drugs, and he wouldn't be flexing his pecs in an attempt to stop or expedite the
sale of a team.
Selig would simply be using his power to call a batter out
at first. If the "best interests of baseball" clause doesn't cover that, what
the hell does it cover? [How about this?: It covers
ensuring the integrity of the umpire's decision. It ensures that whiny bitches
like you don't ruin the outcome of games by filing petitions to overturn calls
every time something goes wrong. Hey, wake up, ESPN guy, bad calls happen in every game. Every damn game. Missed balls and strikes happen every
inning, probably. Do you want to use the best interests of baseball to allow
every game to be petitioned? No, you probably think I'm going overboard. Well,
I'm not. Rules are rules and that's the end of it. You are going overboard with
your whining. Stop it, man up, and get on with it.]
"I just
watched the replay 20 times," Galarraga said, "and there's no way you can call him
safe." [Correct. Except for this: there is a picture
out there that shows that Joyce was not looking at the bag, even though he said
he was. Joyce was looking at the mitt. That is bad technique. Maybe he blinked.
It happens. It happens. It happens. Let's all go down to the bar and cry about
it for awhile. Let's write an article for ESPN calling for MLB to give in to anarchy.
Let the guy have his perfect game. NO!]
Baseball players,
coaches and managers are taught to move on from a moment like this. Get over it.
Prepare for the next day's game. [Exactly. You get
it. So, why are you whining?]
You're supposed to live and
die with the good and bad breaks, and remember that the 162-game season is an
endless narrative that rewards the characters who weather the most plot twists. [Right again.]
But those terms
of engagement just don't cut it here. There's no moving on from the damnation of
the 21st perfect game in history, and the third in a month. [Yes, there is. If this game had happened in 1936, there would be
no argument. But of course, it did not happen in 1936. It happened with the eyes
of the entire country on it because of instant replay and ESPN. Why should the
result of this game be changed just because there is video evidence? The video
evidence makes it harder to swallow, but it is not evidence that can be used to
change a result, because there is no rule that permits results to be changed.
And if you are going to allow an exception for this, you will have to allow an
exception for that and for that and for the other and before you know it, the
game is a joke. No one will know the result of a game, no one will know the
official stats of a game until days later after all of the reviewing has been
done.]
This commissioner has always loved to be loved. In
fact, I've never met a sports executive who cares more about his or her public
standing than Bud Selig. [If he bases all of his
decisions on a need to be loved, he is not a man. He needs to do the right thing
and let the chips fall where they may. The right thing is easy: read the rules,
follow the rules, have a meeting with the umpire and tell him to be more
careful, have a meeting with the pitcher and his manager and the team, if
necessary, and tell them to get over it.]
He wants you to
appreciate him for introducing the wild card, for authorizing the Mitchell
Report, and for giving birth to the World Baseball Classic. He would also prefer
it if you forgot all about that 7-7 score at the 2002 All-Star Game. [It was an All-Star game, for God's sake. Nobody
cares! It happened eight years ago and I had forgotten all about it until you
brought it up again. For the love of God, man, get over it. I repeat: it was and
All-Star game.]
Well, here's your big chance, Bud. The
Tigers are in the books as 3-0 winners either way.
So grab your heaviest
lumber, step into the box, and remember one last thing:
Don't shrug. [Once again, a writer for ESPN leaves me in complete
shock and disbelief that he is being paid for writing an asinine opinion piece.
I know I shouldn't read this crap. I know it is being written for no other
reason than to get hits and sell advertising. I know that the first word in ESPN
is entertainment, but that shouldn't excuse them for writing such
tripe.]

By the way, if the
commissioner follows this loon's advice, that means that Donald would lose a hit
and his average would go down. The next batter, who made the last out of the
game, would have one less at bat and his batting average would go up. Cabrera
would get an assist and Galarraga putout on the Donald play, and whoever
made the play on the last batter would lose an assist and a putout. And,
everyone who was betting on the game (and all of the people who lost their bets
that this would be a perfect game, and you know that there was such betting
going on by about the sixth inning, would be entitled to their winnings,
wouldn't they?

I said I would say more about the official scorer. If the umpire thought that the ball was being bobbled, why didn't the official scorer rule the play an error? Does the ball have to be completely dropped for it to be an error? I don't think so. And, if it were an error, then Galarraga would at least officially have a no-hitter, even if not perfect. I have heard of official scorer's changing their ruling after a game is over, so I think that this could at least be done.