Near perfect

Among the things I missed during my disconnect to the world this week were the events in Detroit on Wednesday night …

Because I had no cable, I was utterly oblivious to any of it until I booted up my computer at work Thursday morning and started skimming through my e-mail, Facebook updates and my news alerts for the morning …

Then, there was the headline …

Umpire Jim Joyce's blown call costs Armando Galarraga perfect game

I hadn’t seen the game. I hadn’t seen any highlights, and I hadn’t taken the time to find the play on YouTube.

… Until now. After writing that last sentence, I logged on and spent the last hour reviewing clips from the game.

Clearly, the runner was out.

(There’s some good amateur video of the play, too. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a big moment in sports or pop culture if there wasn’t someone reimagining the cinematic Hitler scene in good fun … See: Northern Iowa beats KU and Michael Jackson’s death.)

On a side note ... Holy Cow! A THIRD perfect game in the span of a month!? A second in the span of a week!?! Are you kidding  me!? It will be remembered as a perfect game, after all ...

The debate about overturning the call started immediately. And Jim Joyce’s candid admission after the game was an awesome turn of events …

Based on that, initially, I would have said overturn the call -- for the reasons Michael Wilbon cited in his column.

But later Thursday afternoon, I saw the headline that Bud Selig had declined to reverse the call and I could immediately understand his hesitation.

By reversing the call, he sets a precedent, and then what? He opens up a gargantuan can of worms that represents more than a century of questionable calls …

...The Bartman play?

...The entire 2005 ALCS?

...The Jeffery Maier play?

...Don Don Denkinger’s first base call in the 1985 World Series?

...Barry Bonds and the home run records?

Selig would get pummeled by the historians and traditionalists if he reversed the call.

In the end, it is what it is. It happened, within the rules of the game. Baseball will go on, just like it always has. It's a game played by humans, umpired by humans, as it should be.

And all of us will debate it for years to come.

Here's some of the good reads -- and mentions -- on the situation ...
a Perfect Game Thwarted by Faulty Call
a Third perfect game? Joyce’s botched call in ninth denies Tigers’ Galarraga
a Bernie Bytes: Jim Edmonds, Bud Selig, Lakers and “Dexter”
a Kristen Stewart leads the Week of Apologies
a Morning Jolt ... Scroll down to see the Photo of the Day
a Replay Gets Another Look After a Gaffe Seen by All
a Worst Call Ever? Sure. Kill the Umpires? Never.
a One day after botched call, Motor City takes higher road
a Ump impressed with support
a Nearly Perfect in Detroit ... An excellent op-ed piece by Paul Clemens

Crazier yet, the entire episode overshadowed the abrupt retirement of Ken Griffey Jr.

He was a great one.

Here's a classic about the enduring popularity (and ubiquity) of the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. card ... Oh, how I know the card.

Update 06.07.10:

Selig doubts replay use will expand ... After all that's happened, I'm a little dissappointed by this.

An excellent read about Jim Joyce: How Jim Joyce went from Toledo to the bigs to national scrutiny

Opening day!

I had the day off from work today. And it's baseball's opening day.

Does it get any better than this!?

I caught the Rangers beating up on the Indians. Then, I watched gleefully as CC Sabathia and Mark Texiera struggled and the Yankeees lost their opener. And now we're watching the Cubs opener in Houston before catching college basketball's national championship game a little later.

Last night I was all over the Philadelphia-Atlanta opener on ESPN. Seeing and hearing Jon Miller and Joe Morgan back in the Sunday Night Baseball booth was music to my ears. Not so happy to see Steve Phillips joining the team this year, though.

Here's some other good reads that caught my eyes as this season gets underway ...

a AP Poll: Ballpark figures are too high, fans say ... It's a travesty that ticket prices -- not to mention concessions, parking and souvenirs -- have risen so high. Then the Yankees go and build a monstrosity like this
a Red Sox Nation has been hit hard by the recession, and the team is feeling the pain as well
a Ace Zambrano Wants Cubs To Abandon Wrigley Field ... From the Are you kidding me!? file.
a Ken Griffey Jr. celebrated his second stint with Seattle by hitting an opening-night home run
a Healthy, Ortiz's drive is to resume status as a power broker
a Two New Baseball Palaces, One Stoic, One Scrappy
a Mets and Yankees Follow Well-Worn Path With New Old Parks
a Voice of Yankee Stadium May Be Done
a Ball-Strike Monitor May Reopen Wounds
a Curt Schilling's somewhat surprising statistical twin
a Answering Baseball’s What-Ifs

Sunday reading

Happy, sunny Sunday, folks.

Just finished watching Kansas whip up on Missouri. ... Things couldn't be better.

Here's some of the stuff that caught my eyes last week ...

Baseball ...
a Five bold predictions for 2009 ... I'm not holding my breath for the Cubs.
a At 81, Lasorda still has nothing but love for game
a Griffey and Giambi Head Back Home in Twilight
a Judge in Bonds Case Has Reputation as Quick Study
a Johnson Has Lost a Little Off His Fastball but Not His Reputation
a The Incredible Shrinking Baseball Player

Music ...
a At White House Show, Truly a Night of Wonder
a Lawmakers, promoters slam Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger at Senate hearing ... Let's hope their money-making ideas include reducing or getting rid of those wretched "convenience fees."

TV ...
a Ready or Not, Here Comes Jimmy Fallon To Update 'Late Night'
a 'Late Night' host Fallon just wants to have fun
a Don’t Worry, Bedtime’s Safe With the Lads ... Good read on the constant that is late night television.
a Conan O'Brien's 'The Tonight Show'
a Once Again, Conan Will Be on a Richter Scale ... Yes!
a Oscars host Hugh Jackman gave the job his all ... I seemed to be one of the few last week who really enjoyed Jackman as the Oscar host. His opening number featuring Anne Hathaway was one of the best moments of the night.

Politics ...
a A Better Bobby Jindal ... Another good one from Kathleen Parker. Kates and I couldn't stop rolling our eyes during his speech Tuesday night.
a The Jindal Phenomenon

Media & the Internet ...
a Advertisers need patience to tap into Web's potential
a Google Puts Small Ads on Pages of News Site
a What Are You Doing? Media Twitterers Can’t Stop Typing ... After initially being weary and then a slow warming period, I became a full-fledged Twitterer last week.
a Anchors Oblige Public's Craving for Tweets
a A Tale of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress ... Speaking of Twitter, this was one of the more amusing stories I read last week.
a Tragic death of Rocky Mountain News
a Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging
a Hit 'send,' then hit the door

Life & other stuff ...
a Miami banker lavishes $60M on his employees ... Got this one from my friend Raechel
a A jobless man around the house
a Missouri family struggles to pay for cave home ... Now this sounds like a fun place to live. Something tells me it's not, however.
a Restroom ransom? Airline mulls toilet toll ... In case you hadn't heard. This is the Bonehead Idea of the Week.
a The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess
a The unclaimed ashes of hard times
a 6,473 Texts a Month, But at What Cost?

Finally ... Check out this clip featuring Frank Caliendo and Dana Carvey doing their respective Bush impressions ...

Sunday reading

Ugh.

... Did the taxes yesterday. Happy Valentine's Day to us.

... Got my ice skating fix for the winter. And this year I did it with clear vision.

... And we had the family over to celebrates Kates's dad's birthday tonight.

We're exhausted.

Here's some of the reads that caught my eyes this week and were worth sharing ...

Sports ...
a Francona is having the time of his life
a Griffey wants to return to Seattle ... Sweet!
a Confronting A-rod
a A-Rod Dead At 33 ... From The Onion.
a Measuring A-Rod
a A-Rod proves apologies are not easy
a One Name Is Not Enough In This Case
a Steroid stench grows even stronger
a This soap opera is beyond sordid, yet we still watch
a Baseball's Tainted Month
a Hall of Fame needs to get rid of ridiculous character clause ... This is a really tough one for me. I still think the character clause is a valuable factor in determining Hall-worthiness. But I also think guys like Pete Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens put up deserving numbers in their prime, rule-abiding years.
a Juice has sucked fun out of voting ... Another good read about the Hall voting.
a Attendance figures and revenue could decrease as teams are feeling the pressure
a Sox-Yankees: Tranquillity vs. trauma
a Favre: Top 10 All-Time? ... His knack for throwing interceptions and coming undone when games were on the line certainly doesn't help his cause.
a Coach K Never Forgets an 'L'

Music ...
a Scenes from Grammy weekend ... You go Death Cab.
a Grammys on key, but also a bit offbeat
a Wild Thing ... Good stuff about Neko Case.
a Vinyl Takes Another Spin With Music Lovers ... Love it! Except for the stores that charge like 30 bucks for a good vinyl. That's just robbery.

TV ...
a Joaquin Phoenix and late night: What's old is new again ... Phoenix's Letterman appearance is one of the craziest things I've ever seen on television.
a Joaquin Phoenix mystifies David Letterman
a Flight 1549 crew gets laughs on 'Letterman'
a As Conan heads west, where will his humor go? ... I was one of those guys who loved watching Conan in college. Some time after that I realized he's not that funny. I think he's going to have to make some changes to survive Leno's spot.

Politics ...
a Stalled Switch to Digital TV A Classic Tale of Breakdown ... Pretty much. If you're not ready, it's your own fault, I say.
a Even Tiniest Lincoln Relics Command Reverence

Internet & Media ...
a What Newspapers Do, Have Done and Will Do
a Newsweek Plans Makeover to Fit a Smaller Audience
a Boy Photoshops girl: A Flickr love story ... This is my friend Raechel's submission for the week. I found this story both very cool, and kind of creepy.
a TV's Mark Suppelsa connects to 5,000 friends on Facebook
a How Google Decides to Pull the Plug
a Do We Need a New Internet?
a How fast can you add Facebook friends? Faster than Facebook will allow
a How Social Networking Sites Have Changed The Breakup Game
a Twitter? It’s What You Make It

Life & other stuff ...
a Snuggie Pub Crawl coming
a 40 years' worth of thanks ... Great story. If you can, watch the video, too.
a Queens Driver Unknowingly Drags a Body Nearly 20 Miles ... Awful.
a From tech bubble to tech bobbleheads ... I so want one.

So I opened my e-mail this morning ...

... and holy crap!

Ken Griffey Jr. headed to White Sox

Steve Rosenbloom: Where will Sox play him?

Phil Rogers: Cubs don't need more moves

Sunday reading

It's so cold and dreary here today, the weather people are predicting snow tomorrow ...

My ball team played a practice game today. We won 3-1, but our team was so cold and miserable, we convinced the other team to stop it after six innings. Plus, I struck out twice ... The season starts in less than a month, and I'm nowhere near the shape I should be in ...

And Phoebe did not give us a good night of sleep. So far, she's been an excellent sleeper, but not last night ... We also learned on Friday she's a few ounces underweight and we were told to bulk her up this weekend with a lot of feedings ...

But hey, we'll keep going.

I know you've missed them. So here they are, several weeks worth of good reads ...

Baseball...
a Bill Buckner welcomed back by Red Sox
a Cedeno: Cubs 'thinking about' World Series after beating Mets
a For centenarian Cubs' fans, 'the first 99 years are the hardest'
a How in the world did this guy win 347 games? ... A good read from my friend Tom about Greg Maddux.
a Mr. Cub in Sosa's corner
a Reporters on scene recall Elia's meltdown ... listen to the meltdown here.
a Now is the time to appreciate Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas
a Touring New York's Yankee Stadium before the walls tumble
a Red Sox "curse" jersey fetches $175,100 in charity auction ... Now this is a great prank!
a Baseball needs to pick up where Canseco left off
a Heat Reaches a Boiling Point

TV ...
a Neil Patrick Harris: Say No to Britney!
a How They Get Each Other ... another good read about "Mother."
a 'The Office': Jim's Best Pranks!
a Rainn Wilson and the real officea Why 'Men in Trees' and 'Old Christine' should come back ... Never been a fan of "Men in Trees." But Kates and I do really enjoy "Old Christine."
a Where in the World Isn't Ryan Seacrest?
Music ...
a Mariah Carey has a winning formula with 'E=MC2'
a Mariah is a pop queen, but don't forget Elvis is still the King
a Come away with Wong Kar-wai: director persuades Norah Jones to try acting
a Sara Bareilles talks about her hit song, going commercial and writing

Politics ...a Chelsea Clinton Finds Her Voice
a Cheney's shades: A 'Naked Lady?'
a Why Obamamania? Because He Runs as The Great White Hope
a Obama picks up support and calories

Media ...
a At Sparkly Newseum, The Glory Of the Story Goes Above the Fold
a The Katie-Hillary Bond
a Tough Question For CBS: Who'll Follow Couric?

Life & other stuff ...
a Cops kill cougar on North Side

Onion read

The good Onion reads just keep on coming this week...

Although I extremely enjoyed this one ...

Nation To Ken Griffey Jr.: 'We Wish It Were You Hitting 756 Home Runs'

CINCINNATI—Overcome with a mixture of distaste at the almost certain future and a wistful sense at the way things could and should have been, baseball fans across America took time to address veteran Reds superstar Ken Griffey Jr. yesterday...