Perfect?

Whether you're a baseball fan or not, try to stay with me on this post - I think you'll be glad you did at the end. . . .

If you are a sports fan at all and have been near a TV the past few days then you have seen the video that this picture is from at least a million times.

It's the final out (or what would have been the final out) of an ordinary Major League baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians last Wednesday night.

Except that at the time Armando Galarraga - the pitcher for the Detroit Tigers - was throwing a perfect game. Meaning that NO ONE for the entire game - 8 2/3 innings - had reached base. Believe it or not only 20 perfect games have EVER been thrown in Major League history (see this post).

OK, to the point of this post.

The umpire at first base - Jim Joyce - called the runner safe on this play. The replay shows he was clearly out. It 'robbed' Galarraga of one of the greatest feats in sports. A feat pitchers seek all their life.

And yet, in my opinion, what happened next was greater.

Galarraga did not explode or curse Jim Joyce (which is done very often in baseball). Instead he smiled on the field, and in the post-game interview said:

"He really feel bad. He probably felt more bad than me. And nobody's perfect and we're all human. I really give that guy a lot of credit to tell me, 'I need to talk to you "You don't see an umpire after the game come out and say, 'Hey, let me tell you I'm sorry,' That doesn't happen."

This was after Jim Joyce did something unheard of and went to the Tigers locker room and apologized to Galarraga.

I said this in a facebook post earlier this week:

"Maybe even better than a perfect game is seeing men live life well." So true.

Galarraga was a great example of how you respond when life doesn't go your way.
And Joyce displayed a great picture of owning your failures.

Life isn't about perfect games! In reality, none of us throw them. Life is about living well, putting others first, and impacting others for the sake of what is good and righteous.

Thanks Armando and thanks Jim, for showing us there are better things than perfect.