The Imperfect Game
by Jeremy Nickel
What could be a more perfect story to begin a service about baseball with, than the story of Icarus and his father Daedalus? Baseball is, after all, forever connected to the theme of fathers and sons. Is there a more singular American image of the good father than that of a dusky night sky fading slowly from day while a father and son squeeze in a game of catch under the failing light, a race against the heavens and dinner?
Icarus is the far better known of the two, the sons name far out pacing his fathers in history – but to those who know their Greek Mythology Daedalus is the more dynamic and fleshed out character. A craftsman by trade, he was so dedicated to his work that he obsessed over every detail, chasing the elusive perfection. He created Ariadne’s breathtakingly gorgeous dancing grounds and more famously he constructed the intricate Labyrinth at Mino’s which housed the minotaur and was created so perfectly that even Daedalus, its very creator almost was trapped within it upon completion.
As his legend grew it became commonplace to refer to any exquisitely crafted object as being Daedelian, his very name had become synonymous with perfection. But there is always a price to pay for such success. In order to keep his unearthly skills just for his use, and to ensure that the secrets of the labrynth never escaped the one mind that held them, King Minos ordered him to be locked in a tower on an island, along with his son Icarus.
Now, Daedalus knew that it was fruitless to attempt to escape the island by ship, because the King held an iron grip on the seas fleet, not allowing for a boat to leave its shores without a thorough inspection. His only chance for escape lay in the sky. And so the master craftsman began working on his finest creation: wings. Out of the feathers he collected he constructed two pairs of wings. The largest feathers were strung together with twine, but the majority of the feathers that made up the wings were too fine for this treatment, and so he fastened them with wax.
Most of you probably know the rest of the story from here. Before making their escape, Daedalus warns Icarus that he can not fly too high, because as he draws closer to the sun the wax that holds the feathers in place will melt and fall apart, and that likewise he must not fly too low, for the foam and froth of the ocean below would wet the feathers and they would become heavy and useless. Inevitably, halfway through their journey of escape Icarus, who had become almost drunk with the amazing power of flight does indeed fly too close to the hot sun, and just as his father warned, the wax softened, the feathers lost their form and Icarus quickly fell to the ocean and drowned.
There are of course many lessons to be taken from this story, but the one I would like to lift up today is the impossibility of pursuing perfection. This is the theme that follows Daedalus through out his life. In each of his stories, there is always a price to pay for his pursuit. And in this final act, when he creates, in essence, a being even greater than man, one that can potentially reach the heavens, previously reserved only for the gods, he pays the greatest price of all. This is lesson enough for us mere mortals that the pursuit of perfection is not one for humans to endeavor, but it is in his instructions to his son that we receive the clearest teaching.
If you try and fly too high, the sun will melt your wings, but if you fly too low the water will cause the feathers to become heavy and lose their form. The human experience is one that thrives best in the tension between perfection and brokenness, between the realm of the gods and the chaos of the sea.
Ok, so that is all easy enough to understand, but you might all be wondering at this point what any of it has to do with baseball. Well, if he somehow snuck into our sweet little village of Cotuit last night and is here with us today listening, than major league pitcher Armando Galarraga wont wonder at all, for he learned recently all too painfully the price one can pay when they pursue perfection.
You see, real life is messy and undefined thus making striving for perfection all the more vague and difficult to reach. But one of the reasons that we love games, and especially the game of baseball, is that rather than being like life, full of gray areas and with most triumphs being in the eye of the beholder, games have hard and fast rules and clear winners and losers. You roll the dice and move that many places. A full house beats two pair. If you pass Go, you collect $200. And, within these tightly defined parameters, perfection can be pursued. And for all the diverse games we American’s play, none celebrates the pursuit of perfection quite like baseball.
A standard baseball game is made up of nine innings, and each inning is comprised of three outs. Each team comes up once in an inning, meaning that the fewest amount of batters that a pitcher could conceivably face, if they were to retire each player without allowing even one to advance to first base for any reason, not a walk, not a hit batsmen, not an error, would be 27 batters faced. In baseball, if a pitcher is able to achieve this feat, 27 hitters up and 27 hitters down without allowing one to reach first base for any reason, we call this a perfect game. And as you can imagine, it is not an easy task to accomplish.
Organized baseball has been played in these United States for 135 years now, and in that time there have been 20 perfect games thrown. But on June 2nd, Armando Galarraga came as close to adding another as a person could. Before June 2nd even most die hard baseball fans hardly knew who Galarraga was. Over his first few seasons he showed equal parts promise and frustration. But the quality that had always defined him, had always made him stand out in the minds of the scouts, was his calmness.
Baseball is full of rituals and unwritten rules, and among the most respected of these is that when a pitcher is working on a perfect game, no one in the dugout will interact with him. No one will look him in the eye, no one will say hello, or give him a pat on the backside as he hustles to and from the mound, and more than anything else, no one is to acknowledge what is happening. Of course everyone knows. By about the third inning of any game that has a pitcher still retiring every batter, a certain buzz will begin amongst the crowd as the most tuned in fans notice what is happening. And this silent but defeaning buzz will continue to build and grow as people slowly wake up to the potential history unfolding in their midst. No one will directly acknowledge what is taking place, for fear of being the person that by speaking the truth, will pop the bubble of dreams slowly enveloping the stadium. But through knowing glances, grunts and intimation, the word and excitement will spread.
By the eighth inning of Galarragas run at perfection everyone was fully aware of what they were seeing – it was greatness, in human form, come down from the heavens to visit us for nine innings. Not only was every spectator locked in, but national networks like ESPN began cutting in to their regular programming to let people in on the potential history unfolding.
And then, quite suddenly, we were all together at the doorstep of one of the most ultimate moments of celebration in sports. It was the ninth inning, two men were out and Armando Galarraga stood staring at the only man standing between him and perfection, an unassuming rookie named Jason Donald and a 2 foot piece of lumber. After throwing a ball and a strike, Galarraga reared back and threw a nasty pitch that at first seemed to have way too much of the plate, but then at the last possible second dove down and away from the batter. Yet Donald had offered at the pitch, had taken his bat off his shoulder when it looked like a fat meatball down the heart of the plate and had begun to swing with such force that when he saw the pitch deviate from its expected arc and dive away, it was too late to do anything except to make weak contact with the ball off the end of his bat.
This set everything in motion. Tigers first baseman, Miguel Cabrera, moved slowly to his right and gathered the weak grounder. Galarraga, knowing his place, ran from the pitchers mound to first base in anticipation of the toss from Cabrera. Just as the pitchers foot reached the bag Cabrera’s throw reached him and everything happened at once, foot met bag, ball met glove and 30,000 spectators held their breathe and turned to watch first base umpire Jim Joyce make the final out call that would signal the start of a wild celebration.
Only, something was not right. Jim Joyce stood there, staring at the spot the action had just took place in, but rather than having one hand in the air to signal an out, he was crossing his arms in front of his body and signaling that the runner was safe!
There was one moment of confused silence, one moment outside of linear time, where Galarraga was perfect, where Jim Joyce’s right arm was indeed raised, where Jason Donald, head low, slowly walked back to the dug out, representing the 27th consecutive out of MLB’s 21st perfect game.
But then that moment passed, and everyone realized what had actually happened, Jim Joyce had ruined history. The game, and Armando Galarraga, were no longer perfect.
Immediately the energy shifted from celebratory to riotous. Tiger’s manager Jimmy Leland, a man so excitable that he could start a fight at the ballet, burst onto the field and unleashed the fury of us all upon Jim Joyce. He yelled, in words I will not care to repeat today, that Joyce was a very bad man, that he was wrong, and that he had robbed poor Galarraga of his place in history. And he was right. Every replay from every conceivable angle showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the throw had been there in time, that the correct call was out, that Galarraga was perfect.
But there was no fixing this. And that is the thing about perfection – it has no gray areas. Once something is no longer perfect, there is no way to fix it. 27 + 1, no matter the magic tricks one works out later, is not 27. Over the coming days there would be much anger and gnashing of teeth, much shouting for instant replay, for the commissioner of baseball, a weasely man named Bud Selig, to change what had happened in the history books and to record this game as a perfect game.
But apparently Bud Selig is a better theologian than he is a baseball commissioner, because he refused all overtures. He knows that perfection has no gray areas. But for most people, this was very hard to deal with. This perceived injustice transcended baseball, transcended sport even. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said during his next morning press briefing, "I hope that baseball awards a perfect game to that pitcher," joking that the White House was "going to work on an executive order" to that effect. Everyone was angry. Angry that perfection had been possible but that it had been taken away. Angry, they said for Galarraga, but truly, angry for themselves for being robbed the opportunity to know, even through the experience of another, what it would feel like to be perfect.
But there was one man who was not angry. And it was Armando Galarraga. And now returning to our story, let me tell you something truly amazing. Something that is so much more powerful than any perfect game.
As Jimmy Leyland, the Detroit manager, continued his meltdown on the field, yelling at and epically berating Jim Joyce, Armando Galarraga quietly returned to the mound and began preparing in his mind for what still had to happen. Somehow, he had to once again pitch, and record an out for the game to be over. He had to put this moment behind him and move on. Not in a year, not in a month, not even tomorrow, but right then. And he did.
Noticing that Galarraga had returned to the mound, order was slowly restored, a batter whose name no one will ever remember came to the plate and grounded out to infielder Brandon Inge and the game really was over, but was really only just beginning.
Everyone needed to hear from Galarraga, needed to know how he felt, and expected his energy to meet theirs. But he was anything but angry. I don’t wish to overstate it, I am not trying to suggest the man for canonizing – but he was as calm and understanding right then in that moment that a person could ever be. Not only did he refuse to attack Jim Joyce but he actually offered that he was one of the best umpires there was and that everyone makes mistakes sometimes. He even met with Joyce, that evening, and forgave him, truly accepted his apology right there on the spot. Now that is amazing grace!.
And not to make too much of this one moment that happened on a baseball diamond, but our athletes let us down so often, and in this mans actions there is a real lesson that we all need to hear.
We live in that place between the perfection of the heavens and the chaos of the sea. Our reality is the tension between perfection and complete brokenness, and so we must learn to navigate those waters well. And we are measured more by what we do in those moments of brokenness than at any other time. Do we explode into meltdown anger at what now is and can not be undone, or can we find that place of deep spiritually centered calm where instead we can focus on what now needs to be done?
Joe Posnanski, a wonderful national sportswriter wrote on his blog the night after Galarraga’s Imperfect Game that: When my young daughters ask, “Why didn’t he get mad and scream about how he was robbed,” I think I will tell them this: I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s because Armando Galarraga understands something that is very hard to understand, something we all struggle with, something I hope you learn as you grow older: In the end, nobody’s perfect. We just do the best we can. Now that is sportswriting! May it be so.