HERE'S A GUY WHO DID NOT STRIKE OUT ON CLASS...A GREAT LIFE LESSON

We are car guys, but today we want to talk a little baseball. Our main reason is that an umpire manned up and showed a lot of class after he blew a call. Perfect games in baseball are very rare. Oddly enough, the perfect game would have been the third one of the 2010 baseball season. Those are very long odds in an "I never got tasered for massive stupidity at a Phillies game" kind of odds.

The real story was the umpire who admitted that he blew a close call at the base on the crucial last out of the game. He took full credit for incompetence on the call after he saw the replay. It was a close call that could easily have been missed in the heat of the moment.

After all, most of us were born on Earth- not Krypton.

First base umpire Jim Joyce was ready to accept the heat for the blown call. He apologized to Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga for his mistake and did not offer any excuse for his mistake. It was a refreshing change from situations where celebrities knowingly and willingly commit major breaches of ethics, then immediately head to rehab and blame it on an addiction.

The last thing Joyce wanted to do was to blow the call at first for the pitcher in Galarraga's home park. That is a dangerous and perilous path to pursue for anybody not into masochism in a big way.

The point of a baseball is a victory, like any organized game (or armed conflict for that matter). But both parties managed to score a win with this situation. It went well beyond a mere game when Jim Joyce offered a heartfelt apology for his mistake, and Armando Galarraga accepted it with class and grace.

Galarraga may never get as close to a perfect game in major league baseball again in his life. The odds are very long for a repeat opportunity for the guy. But he will likely be even more famous for the net result when two guys handled a difficult situation in a manner that was more remarkable than a perfect game.

Both men became role models for what is right about people instead of the usual wrong category.

COMMENTS

DENNIS:"This story is going to be the talk of the "Sports Bar" crowd for the next 100 years".