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Armando Galarraga, Jim Joyce and Me
I’ve been a sportswriter for 30 years, and I’ve accumulated some great stories over the years. Tonight, I got a reminder of one of the wildest of them all.
Like most sports networks during the pandemic, Fox Sports Detroit has been showing replays of famous games. They have mostly focused on the championships won by the Pistons and Red Wings, but last night they went with a Tigers game.
Specifically, the game against the Cleveland Indians on June 2, 2010 — the night Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce teamed up to create baseball’s only 28-out perfect game.
If you are a baseball fan, you know the story — it is one of the few regular-season games with its own Wikipedia page. Just saying “the Galarraga/Joyce game” brings memories pouring back for fans, while almost no one remembers Dallas Braden’s perfect game less than a month earlier.
If you don’t know the story, an average major-league pitcher had the night of his life, retiring the first 26 batters in order. He should have gotten the 27th and a perfect game, but one of baseball’s best umpires missed a simple call. It could have ended as a terrible moment in the game’s history, but Galarraga’s class and Joyce’s emotional apology made them into role…
