A couple nights back, Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game in which he got 28 batters out. It’s a well publicized story that I won’t get into except to say that umpire Jim Joyce blew a call and robbed a guy of one of the greatest feats in all of baseball. Nobody’s really that upset with Jim Joyce about it because he owned it. He apologized to everyone who had a pulse, even walking into the Tigers locker room to talk to Galarraga. Galarraga responded by forgiving Joyce, which is pretty cool if you ask me. If an ump robbed Ubaldo Jimenez or Zack Greinke of a perfect game, I don’t know if I would be as gracious and classy as the Detroit fans have been.
Mostly, people were all over Bud Selig for not instituting instant replay last year. Bud Selig is an easy guy to get mad at because he’s never apologized for anything he or baseball has ever done wrong. When MLB reviewed and denied the use of replay, Bud said he wanted the Human Element as part of baseball. I think you could get this pretty well from the baseball players because I’m pretty sure they’re all human no matter
how many steroids they are taking. But Bud thought the umpires ought to be human too. The UmpBot stock I bought went right in the toilet when he said that.
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NPR ran a story a few days ago about Senate Secret Holds. I listened to the story because I thought it was about professional wrestling. I imagined John McCain climbing to the top of Joe Biden’s giant desk and leaping across the chamber to drop a double axe-handle on Charles Schumer. I think McCain is the toughest member of the Senate. He’s scrappy and I wouldn’t bet against him, even if it was all fixed.
As it turns out, a secret hold is a lot like a filibuster, except it keeps the motion from ever getting to the Senate floor. And it’s anonymous. A senator can go to his or her party leadership and say ask for a hold without ever being identified on the floor. Listening to the story, it felt a little bit like a man walking into a 7-11 and asking for all the cash in the register because there’s a man outside with his hand in his pocket claiming he has a gun.
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Maybe Senators are smarter than we give them credit for. We Americans are pretty easy to wait out. In the short time since I started writing this post, no one is talking about Armando Galarraga. We’ve moved on to Stephen Strausberg, NBA playoffs, who’s holding out of NFL OTAs and college conference realignment. The first 28 out perfect game seems like last season.
It will be two weeks on Wednesday.
National news isn’t that different. We are always interested in right now. It’s true. Watch any of the cable news channels for a day. There is no “news.” There’s only “breaking news.” And that doesn’t mean it’s the most important. Around 16000 kids die every day from hunger. Fox News wants to tell you about “Stars With Sex Tapes”. MSNBC says “Pickup sales perk up along with economy”.
Twitter is breaking news on steroids.
Nick Carr and others have asked if our technology is making us stupid. It isn’t, but only in the sense that guns don’t kill people. We are choosing to buy in—to believe that the stories on the news or in our twitter feeds are the stories. We are choosing to live contextualess lives that move from one outrage to the next.
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In his last two starts, Galarraga has only given up three runs. Detroit has won both games. He’s pitching lights out.
No word yet on if John McCain will add the Flying Elbow to his arsenal.
Breaking news as it happens.
