Pic of the Week

Home plate umpire Jim Joyce had plenty of company
making the safe call on Jonny Gomes in the third inning
of Game Six on Wednesday,

This was a close play, and Jim Joyce got the call right. As he did at third base with the obstruction call that ended Game Three — a call controversial only to those who either don't know baseball's rules or who don't want those rules applied (to the detriment of the Red Sox and/or late in close games).

The Red Sox had very good World Series, which is why they are the champions. Joyce, I think, had an even better Series.

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This concludes the Pic of the Week series for another year.  Click here to review all my selections. There have obviously been some good ones, but my favorite from this year is the one of Torii Hunter tumbling over the outfield wall in vain pursuit of David Ortiz' playoff grand slam.

Games 3 and 4: An even Series

Boston first baseman Mike Napoli leaves the field
after tagging out pinch-runner Kolten Wong to end
Sunday's Game 4.

Two games played in St. Louis, two bizarre endings.

Game Three figures to be famous, or infamous, depending on how one views the outcome. I wrote the Monday print column about the obstruction call that awarded St. Louis the decisive run, so I won't rehash it all here. Suffice it to say that the wonderfully hilarious "Old Hoss Radbourn" Twitter feed summed it up beautifully within seconds of the ruling:

If you can't trip a guy at third base then I weep for America.
— Old Hoss Radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) October 27, 2013

There still, however, remain nitwits like Ron Coomer — that he actually gets paid to "analyze" baseball is beyond comprehension — insisting it was a bad call. No, it was the right call. It was a bad play by Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Had Allan Craig not been tripped, he would have scored on Saltalamacchia's wild throw. He did trip, and the umpires awarded him the run. Which is as it should be, and which is as will always happen on such a play. (Coomer, a former third baseman, is perhaps identifying too deeply with Will Middlebrooks, the third baseman who was put in a hopeless position by his catcher.)

The Cardinals returned the favor on Sunday, albeit less crucially, when rookie Kolten Wong, pinch-running in the ninth down two runs, got picked off first base. As one of my brothers was prone to saying back in the day, dum with a capital M. His run was only important if other Cardinals could score also, so why take any sort of chance?

It was a sizable mental mistake, but even if Wong hadn't gotten picked off, the Cardinals were likely to lose.

So the Series is even, two games apiece, and one thing we know for sure: There will be a Game Six in Boston, and the home plate umpire for that game will be Jim Joyce — the umpire who made the obstruction call in Game Three. I predict the Fenway fans will continue to embarrass themselves.

Umpires and the pursuit of perfection

A veteran umpire (the story goes) noted that at one city the same leather-lunged fan berated him constantly. He made a few inquiries and learned that the loudmouth was a prominent local physician.

Next day, the ump worked the plate with the fan doing his abrasive thing — until the veteran arbiter approached him: "Doctor, you get to bury your mistakes. Mine live forever."

Jim Joyce's mistake on Wednesday will certainly live forever. Indeed, Armando Galarraga's imperfect game is likely to be remembered longer than Dallas Braden's perfecto because of Joyce's miscue.

There's an umpiring adage that says it's the only job at which you're expected to be perfect on the first day and then improve. Actually, that's true for the conscientious worker in any field, be it copy editing, pitching or haircutting. If the people putting cars together on the assembly line slip up, bad things can happen.

We pursue perfection, but achieving it is another matter, and sustaining it well-neigh impossible. Even when an individual is doing everything right, perfection can hinge on somebody else doing his job right. Had one of Galarraga's infielders let a grounder go through the wickets or overthrown the first baseman, there would have been no perfect game for Joyce to wreck on the 27th batter.

The people demanding instant replay are seeking perfection from technology. I'm not an advocate of instant replay; I don't believe that perfection is any more possible from machines than it is from humans. It's going to happen; the Galarraga-Joyce game has probably made the pressure for it too strong for even Bud Selig to resist much longer, and even if Bud does continue to hold out, the next commissioner probably won't.

The broadcasters like to tell us that the idea is to get the call right. They forget, or conveniently ignore, the reality that the only people in the park for whom the correct call is the priority are the umpires. The players, managers, coaches, even the fans — what they want is the call that helps their team.