Coach to the Contrary

Last week, 26 Cleve­land Indi­ans stepped up to the plate. One by one, Armando Galar­raga, the 28 year old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, sent them back to the dugout.

At the top of the 9th inning with 2 outs, Galar­raga was just one bat­ter away from pitch­ing a per­fect game – a feat that has only been accom­plished 20 other times in the his­tory of major league baseball.

His next pitch to Cleveland’s Jason Don­ald yielded a ground ball, which was scooped up by first base­man Miguel Cabr­era. Galar­raga ran to cover first base. Cabrera’s throw beat Don­ald to the base. Every­one in the sta­dium went NUTS! It was a per­fect game.

Not so fast.

First base umpire, Jim Joyce, called Don­ald safe. The crowd and the play­ers looked on in dis­be­lief as Don­ald stood on first base with an infield single.

Here’s how it hap­pened in case you missed it.

The replay clearly ver­i­fied that Don­ald was out. Even the umpire later admit­ted that he blew the call. “I just cost that kid a per­fect game,” he said.

Armando Galar­raga was robbed of his chance to be writ­ten in the record books for all time. He was denied the recog­ni­tion he deserved for pitch­ing baseball’s 21st per­fect game.

But this is not the END of the story. The real story is what hap­pened after the bun­gled call.

Here is a play-by-play of Galarraga’s reac­tion:
1. He smiled.
2. He did not scream obscen­i­ties.
3. He did not “flip the bird.”
4. He refrained from rant­ing, rav­ing, spit­ting, scream­ing.
5. There was no child­ish dirt kick­ing.
6. He con­tin­ued pitch­ing, get­ting the final out of the game in the next at-bat.
7. He accepted the umpire’s request to apol­o­gize face to face. Galar­raga wel­comed the meet­ing with Joyce, say­ing, “He feels really bad. I know that nobody’s per­fect. I understand.”

Jim Joyce was vis­i­bly moved by Galarraga’s sports­man­ship. In fact, he said in response, “I would have been the first per­son in my face….. and he never said a word to me.”

Armando Galar­raga could have eas­ily jus­ti­fied resent­ment, anger, and bit­ter­ness. Any­one who wit­nessed this injus­tice would have eas­ily under­stood, with a vast major­ity con­don­ing any amount of scream­ing, spit­ting, dirt-kicking behavior.

Instead, Galarraga’s actions serve as an exem­plary les­son for all of us. The way in which he con­ducted him­self. His gra­cious­ness. His dig­nity. His civil­ity. His control.

Galar­raga stands in stark con­trast to what we typ­i­cally see stream­ing into our tele­vi­sion sets and com­put­ers: indi­vid­u­als who exhibit nas­ti­ness. Con­tempt. Hos­til­ity. Sar­casm. Ven­omous lan­guage. We even par­tic­i­pate in help­ing them jus­tify their behavior.

If I could, I would gather a group of folks in our soci­ety who I believe stand to learn the most from Mr. Galar­raga: news pun­dits. I would take them all on a retreat for the week­end, and do the following:

1. Make them watch the replay of the entire 9th inning and sub­se­quent exchange between Messrs Galar­raga and Joyce. I would make them watch it 50 times. No talk­ing.

2. I would then bring both Galar­raga and Joyce into the room. Every­one would sit on the floor with a snack of warm milk and cook­ies, and lis­ten as Armando and Jim shared why they chose the behav­iors and words they did.

3. Only then would they be allowed to talk. The only ques­tions I would allow would be ques­tions for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. That is it.

Oh, wait. Before they left, I would make them clean up after themselves.

Galar­raga plays in the Amer­i­can League, where a des­ig­nated hit­ter fills in for the pitcher’s at-bat. Though he never stepped up to the plate him­self, Galar­raga proved to be in another league than his com­peti­tors. With his actions, in that cru­cial moment of his career, he hit a grand slam.

Clutch move, Mr. Galarraga.

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