I Love Baseball

As Armando Galarraga and James Joyce recently demonstrated, there's no game like baseball for building character. It's a tough game to play at the professional level. Hitting a baseball is probably the toughest thing to do in professional sports. The greatest hitters have rarely averaged more than one hit out of three tries over a career. And the greatest,Ty Cobb, had the highest lifetime average of 36.7 hits for every 100 times at bat. A .300 hitter earns millions and accolades forever. That's three hits out of ten tries. Imagine returning 3 serves out of 10 at Wimbledon. Or completing 3 passes out of 10 in even a high school football game? So, while it's slow and is without a timeclock or a shotclock, baseball requires an enormous amount of many skills.

Most of you are aware of the recent "perfect-game" lost by Galarraga due to Joyce's missed call on the game's putative final out. And most are aware of the two men's acceptance of responsibility and demonstration of true graciousness. Further, the baseball Commissioner did not yield to the demands of some for "fairness", i.e., overturning the bad call to allow Galarraga to be credited with his perfect game.

All involved were a credit to the game they, I and tens of millions of people love.

It does not get more perfect than that.