Hail to the Byrd Man

For the last few years, watching the Major League All-Star game has been about as much fun as pulling your fingernails out.

Those of us who pull for the Phillies knew the game had much more importance than this mid-summer love-fest ought to have. In 2003, major league baseball decided (in an effort to beef up TV ratings of the game, which had been declining) to "make the game more meaningful" and decreed that the winner of the annual game between the American and National league stars would determine who had home field advantage in the World Series.

The National League had not won this game since 1996, when it was played in Veterans Stadium. (The game in 2002 ended in a 7-7 tie). That means since the game was artificially given more "meaning" by Major League Baseball, no National League team has had the advantageof hosting four games of the World Series. Until last night.

If you think that doesn't matter, think again. The Phillies managed to win the 2008 World Series by taking care of business in five games. The last three were at home. (That fifth game, you will recall, became a game for the ages when it was suspended after 5 innings with the score tied at 2-2 because of a torrential downpown that left the field under a blanket of rainwater.)

The Phillies -- heck, the entire region -- had to wait two long days before the last four innings were played. The Phillies played those final four innings with a dramatic sense of urgency. Not because no local team had won a championship in 25 years. Because they didn't want to return to Tampa for games 6 and 7. Tampa had "won" the right to host those critical games because the AL team had defeated the NL at the All-Star game.

And then there is the way last season ended. Who among us thinks the outcome of the 2009 World Series against the Yankees might have ended differently if the Phils had played the first two games at home and then had critical game six at Citizen's Bank Park? The National League lost last year's All-Star game 4-3, with Phillies' manager Charlie Manuel at the helm. That loss came back to haunt Manuel in October.

If you caught the end of the game last night, you already know the Phillies owe one of their former players a huge pat on the back. Marlon Byrd, now an outfielder for the Chicago Cubs and having his best season ever, came up huge. After getting behind in the count, 0-2 to pitcher Joe Thornton, Byrd patiently worked a critical walk to load the bases with two outs in the 7th inning and his team down, 1-0. He barely beat a throw home to score the game's final run (a huge insurance run) when Atlanta's catcher, Brian McCann, cleared the bases with a rope down the line.

But Byrd saved his best work for the bottom of the ninth with the NL nursing a 3-1 lead. With one out and Boston's sluggish slugger David "Big Papi" Ortiz leading off first base, Byrd saved the game. He hustled in from right field on a flair that dropped in front of him off the bat of John Buck and threw a strike to second base to force Ortiz for the second out. A routine fly to right field on the very next pitch ended the contest and -- after a drought of 15 years -- the National League finally had won an All-Star game.

Byrd's heriocs could have huge ramifications for the Phillies if they can get healthy and go on a second half run -- as has been their habit for the last three seasons.

If the World Series comes down to a seventh game and the Phillies are hosting that critical game just a few days before Halloween, we'll all be lifting toasts to Marlon Byrd. Maybe then some of us hard core baseball fans will stop complaining about baseball's decidsion to make the mid-summer classic "more meaningful."

I, for one, would love to see a game seven played this year at the Bank. But I also wish MLB would go back to letting the leagues take turns having the home field advantage. It's more fair that way. Home field advantage is much too big a prize to hang on the result of an All-star game that is essentially just an exhibition game.

The Perils of Co-ed Softball

After more than 20 years away from the softball diamond, I joined the union's team at school this summer, organized by one of my colleagues in the English Department.

So far, the best news is that I have not been injured. I've been lucky. (It helped that I never had to chase a ball down in the outfield and only rarely had to run hard on the base paths).

During the course of the season, as you might expect with a team as old as ours, a host of injuries cropped up: hamstring pulls, broken toes, aching backs, sore shoulders, ankle sprains, even migraine headaches and gastro-intestinal pains. (Food poisoning? One too many pre-game hotdogs at the Wawa? Your guess is as good as mine!)

Medical tape and knee wraps weren't nearly enough to keep us on the field. We were candidates for a MASH unit. Somehow, we managed to recruit enough new players to the team to compete in most of our games and complete all 14 of them.

The next best news is that the team I play for, the APSCUF Rams, ended our season with an 8-6 record, good enough to sneak into the Chester County Co-Ed Softball League's divisional playoffs.

You wanna talk about long-in-the-tooth long-shots playing above their collective heads? Jamie Moyer's got nothing on us. I will be 59 next month and I am not the oldest head on the team. Dr. Frank Fry, the chairman of the kinesiology department (who is in far better shape than I am), is our oldest player at 60.

Our starting pitchers, Dr. Kevin Flynn (professor of accounting) and Dr. Tom Legg (professor of history), are both in their early 50s. (I sure hope none of them are ticked off at me for putting such personal info "out there, on the internet.") A slew of other players are between 45 and 50. I am hazarding a guess here, but if you asked me to put a number on the average age of our team at the start of the season, I would say 45.

How we ever managed to win 8 games against teams whose players who are in their 20s and 30s is beyond me.

We lost our first game to Downingtown Middle School, 20-0. (Actually, it was the faculty of DMS we played that evening, but we were so inept it likely would not have mattered much if it was 6th graders who took the field against us.)

The class of the league's Western division is a team called Kicking Puppies. We were so offended by their team name we threatened to call PETA. They rolled over the other teams in our division like a tank, collectively out-scoring their opponents by more than 160 runs. That's a whupping of an average of 12 runs a game. (Surely it's no coincidence this total happens to coincide with the number of runs needed to end a game early when the "mercy rule" kicks in).

They finished the season at 13-1 and the only team that managed to defeat them all summer was ours. Don't ask me how. We did it with smoke and mirrors and stellar defense (for one evening anyway) that belied our real abilities. I think we got lucky that night. Or maybe they were just missing their best sluggers? That could be, too.

We squeaked into the playoffs last week with an improbable last-inning win against The Square Bar (unabashed plug here: The Square Bar is our favorite West Chester post-game watering hole, and not just because it's convenient to all four of the fields we use. Any summer night you go there, you'll likely find at least two dozen soaking wet, sweaty softballers downing post-game brews and chatting as amicably about their errors as their heroics).

Both teams needed to win the game to become one of the four divisional playoff teams. Flynn, our best pitcher, had a summer class to teach that night and couldn't play. Legg started but got pounded in the first inning. By the end of the second, the Rams were down 8-0. We clawed back (or maybe "hoofed back" is the anatomically correct word given the species of our team name) to tie the score in the fifth, 10-10.

The Square Bar posted four unearned runs in the top of the 6th and our hopes for the playoffs looked bleak. With two outs in the bottom of the 7th, they finally came to rest on the slender shoulders of 40-something Dr. Cheryl Wanko, professor of English. Somehow, her ground ball up the middle of the infield eluded the pitcher, shortstop and second baseman and the two men on base both scored to tied the game. Two batters later, Tom Legg nursed a dramatic walk and Wanko trotted home with the winning run.

It was the second "walk off walk" of our campaign.

Don't toss out that roll of medical tape just yet! Bring on those Kicking Puppies! The playoffs start next Sunday evening, July 11th.

With any luck, maybe we can avoid the dreaded mercy rule! (Either that or we call in PETA and wage a wicked protest!)

Go Rams!

Mid-year pop music report

Friends who know me well, know my affinity for all kinds of popular music. I freely admit to being a music junky and that I spend far more money on this hobby than almost anything else. They also know I send out a list of my favorites at the end of the year with my Christmas cards.


My music geekdom extends to discussing my favorite CDs of the year with several close friends and the friends of my son, Luke, and engaging them in entertaining, if esoteric, conversations about which are the best CDs and songs of the year.

I have never gone quite to this length.... putting out a mid-year CD report of the top CDs of the year so far. But I figured: surely there must be other music fans in the tri-state area who are curious about the state of popular music in 2010 and who might actually enjoy some tips on what to buy this summer. My year end lists tend to undergo many changes (after intense debates) before I am finished with them. But it's a good bet at least a few of these CDs will make my 2010 year-end round up.


For the first half of 2010, these are ten discs I can say stood up to repeated listenings. I have listed them alphabetically.


"Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate". (Nonsuch). The incredible Mali guitarist, Ali Farka Toure, passed away in 2006. But he left some real treasures in the can, including this wonderful collaboration with fellow African, Toumani Diabate, the master of the kora, an African stringed instrument. They cut this album in London, in 2005, as Toure was dying. Cuban bass player, Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, backs them. They previously worked together on a world music classic, In the Heart of the Moon, released in 2005. This one may be even better. Steeped in the blues this disc is full of deeply felt and very moving music, played by two giants of the continent. This is Toure's swan song.



Apples in Stereo, Travelers in Space and Time (Yep Roc Records)
Apples in Stereo specialize in piano based rock. Their sound features lush harmonies and retro hooks that cop the song styles of classic '70s bands. This year's model follows the Jeff Lynne playbook. If you were a fan of the gorgeous vocal harmonies of Electric Light Orchestra back in the day, you'll be primed for this suckerpunch of sweet ear candy.


Beach House, "Teen Dream" (Subpop). Dreamy, blissed out folk pop by two of the most innovative musicians working in America today, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand. Chiming guitars fit hand in hand with rippling keyboard riffs as their drum machine adds tasteful taps and tics that serve as an understated backdrop for their songs. Lyrically, the CD contains Scally's most clear-eyed look at the fragile nature of relationships between men and women. "Wry and wise enough to know better about idealizing love, and romantic enough to still believe in it" as the All Music Guide review eloquently puts it.



San Patricio, the Chieftains featuring Ry Cooder (Blackrock Records). Another Ry Cooder mashup of musical styles. This time he's joined Ireland's revered Cheiftains with a wide variety of Mexican musicians to give tribute to a small battalion of Irish soldiers who, abhorrant of America's declaration of Manifest Destiny, deserted the American Army in 1846 during the Mexican War and followed their conscience to fight for Santa Ana and the Mexicans. Buoyant in some places, reverantly reflective in others, the songs give poignant testimony to this band of brothers who were labeled as traitors here but are still warmly regarded as freedom fighters by our neighbors south of the border.


Freelance Whales, "Weathervanes" (Frenchkiss). Won't likely be everyone's cup of tea, (Judah Dadone's vocals tend to sound a little too precious for fans who like their rock hard -- think Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie with a backing sound borrowed from Sufjan Stevens and you have some idea) but the music is mesmorizing, quirky and fun. Few bands would have the sheer gumption to include a banjo so high in the mix but it makes for a distinctive listening experience. WXPN listeners have been onto this one for most of the year already. A band to watch.




The Gaslight Anthem, "American Slang," (SideOneDummy). The local city paper gave this one a rave, 4-star review recently and claimed it was the "soundtrack of the summer of 2010." Hyperbole aside, more than a few of my Springsteen friends have glommed onto the Gaslight Anthem and love how the band has appropriated the Boss's signature sound to revisit the cityscapes and crippling blue collar angst of Springsteen's best early songs. "American Slang" might pale in comparison to Springsteen's classic "Born to Run" album, but what doesn't? If you love Bruce, take this one out for a spin. You won't be disappointed.


The Hold Steady, "Heaven Is Whenever" (Vagrant). Comparisons to Springsteen are an albratross the Hold Steady have had around their collective necks for several albums now. Craig Finn's acerbic descriptions of deals gone wrong and the drug-induced escapades of dead-end hood rats bear most of the responsibility. But the band rocks as hard as any American band working the bars these days and their live performances are worth seeing. I miss Franz Nicolay's keyboard playing on this disc, but Finn sounds fine and the band is as tight as ever.


Mumford & Sons, "Sigh No More" (Glassnote). Britain's answer to the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons plough the same fertile territory of acoustic hillbilly folk/rock. Their vocal harmonies are equal to the Avett's plaintive yearnings and they play their instruments (an appealing assortment of banjos, acoustic guitars, horns and fiddles) with the same kind of abandon. My favorite new band of the year.


The National. High Violet (4AD). Hardly any pop bands feature baritone singers these days, so Matt Berninger's vocals give the National a distinct, unique sound. This is their most mature effort and my favorite disc of the first half of the year. May not jump right out of your speakers, but give it time. This one mellows like a fine cabernet and will grow on you more and more as time goes on.

Roky Erickson with Okkervil River. "True Love Cast Out All Evil". (Anti). Roky Erickson was the songwriter and lead singer for the '60s garage band, The 13th Floor Elevators. He fell on hard times for the past decade with a variety of mental problems, but this collaboration with Austin's Okkervil River is surprisingly vibrant and emotionally effective. This is haunting folk music.



Five others that are worth hearing and may grow in me yet as the year progresses:



Spoon, "Transference" (Merge)

The Len Price 3, "Pictures" (Wicked Cool)

Ike Reilly, "Hard Luck Stories" (Rock Ridge)

Radio Department, "Clinging to a Scheme" (Labrador)

LCD Soundsystem, "This Is Happening" (Virgin)


Many thanks to Bill Hartnett and Dominic Umile for their suggestions and input on this mid-year list.

Meet the Patriots

The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the nation's most highly regarded social reform groups, publishes a quarterly magazine called "Intelligence Report." The summer 2010 issue came out this past week and it's a useful primer of the New Patriots -- the "new generation (that) leads the reborn antigovernment movement."

This is the face of the future of America and it is not pretty. Oh, they smile all right. But their's is the smile of a cat that swallowed the canary. They represent the most dangerous arc of ultra-conservative politics since the Red Scare days of Senator Joseph McCarthy and their hateful bile and outright lies are aimed at bringing about armed insurrection against the government.

"Patriots" is the word they use to describe themselves. "Take back our country" is their rallying cry. But the nitwits who buy into their screeds don't question this bumper sticker "wisdom". They respond to it with visceral glee and campaign dollars. What they advocate is nothing short of sedition. Who they are is the opposite of patriots. Traitors is the word that comes to mind.

"Intelligence Report" has 35 capsule summaries of the worst of the lot. Most of them are names you've never heard of -- yet. I don't have the stomach or the inclination to give you all 35 profiles. But here are some of the worst offenders and what IR has to say about these creeps.

Jon Roland. "When a militiaman claims the federal government is trampling the Constitution, he might have Roland to thank... In the mid'90s, Roland founded the Constitution Society, a Patriot organization whose website assembles writings of all manner of constitutional issues, including a section on the alleged right to assemble a militia. The site delves into the world of conspiracy theories by providing links to sites questioning the Oklahoma City bombing and the role of researchers in creating the HIV virus."

Cliff Kincaid. "Whether he's sounding the alarm about the Vatican's role in the 'New World Order' or the prospect of the U.S.military becoming a sinister homosexual fighting force, Kincaid persistently churns out columns savaging liberals, making groundless claims and trumpeting far-right conspiracy theories.... He is the founder and president of America's Survival Inc., a group that said it monitors the United Nations in order to "expose the influence of global institutions" on people's lives."

Gary Franchi. "Franchi is one of the leading promoters of a resurgent Patriot conspiracy theory that alleges the government is creating concentration camps for U.S. citizens. In 2009, he produced 'Camp FEMA: American Lockdown,' a video contending that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is behind the camps that could be used to house political dissenters. The camps 'are on existing military bases now, it's not a big secret.' "

Norm Olson. "Few people played a bigger role in transforming Michigan into a hotbed of militia activity during the '90s than Olson. Today, the founder of the Michigan Militia is living in Alaska and working with others to build the Alaska Citizens Militia. He told the Reboubt Reporter that he was convinced Americans would be forced to repel "tyrannical, oppressive federal aggression......America is very very ill," he said, "and people across the country are preparing themselves."

Mike Vanderboegh. "On March 19th, Vanderboegh, enraged at the imminent passage of health care reform, furiously called on Americans to break the windows of local Democratic Patry headquarters offices around the country. 'If you wish to send a message that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows,' he wrote. "'Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them in broad daylight.' Over the next few days, party office windows and those of several members of Congress were indeed smashed with bricks in several states, criminal attacks followed with glee by Vanderboegh in his blog's 'Window War' feature."

Does anyone besides me hear the echoes of the rise of the National German Socialist Workers' Party in all of this? Can our own version of Kristallnacht be far behind?

Let's call these people what they are: the lunatic fringe. Neo-cons. Radicals. Arch-enemies of the state. Traitors to the constitution.

They bring shame to the word "conservative." Where is the conservative outrage?

Merchant Wows WCU Poetry Conference

Natalie Merchant, the renowned American folk-rock artist, closed the 16th Annual Poetry Conference at West Chester University's Swope Hall with a 90-minute performance of poems set to music that was as informative as it was musically captivating.

Backed up a tasteful 3-piece acoustic band and armed with a powerpoint presentation of black and white photographs, Merchant's performance to the assembled poets and professors was an enchanting mix of lecture and music. She performed 15 or so "songs" from her most recent release, Leave Your Sleep. Critics have called it the most ambitious project of her long and auspicious career.

She took nursery rhymes, poems, and lullabies of 19th and 20th century British and American writers as source material for her record, setting them to original music. Some are well known children's standards and others barely known at all. Some of the authors she covered in last evening's performance were e.e. cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mervyn Peake, Ogden Nash, Nathalia Crane, and Robert Graves.

Among the highlights of last evening's performance were Nash's wonderfully whimsical "The Adventures of Isabel", Crane's "The Janitor's Boy" (a paean to unrequited teen-age lust) and Stevenson's somber "The Land of Nod," written in a feverish stupor near the end of his life when he weighed less than 110 pounds.

Merchant's performances of the poem/songs were always engaging. She used her arms and hands expressively to accentuate the lyrical meaning of the songs. Seeing her perform in such an intimate setting (the event was held in the Madeleine Wing Adler Auditorium, which only seats 300 or so patrons) made the evening a special event.

What made the evening especially memorable were Merchant's small touches: the black and white photograph portraits of the poets she projected onto a back-dropped screen and the stories she told about the poems she choose for her project. These intimate history lessons, though academic in nature, were perfect for this scholarly audience and not the kind of performance she would likely duplicate in a concert setting for her regular fans.

It was a bravura performance and a worthy way to end Professor Michael Peich's tenure at the helm of the annual poetry conference. A panel of tuxedoed poets, lead by the former chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, Dana Gioia, held a "celebrity roast" of Peich at the Holiday Inn afterward Merchant's performance.

Most of the jokes, stories and poems recited in Peich's honor were far too ribald to repeat here.

It was a night to remember.

Observations of the Shanghai World's Fair

This is a picture of my 22-year-old daughter, Isabel, taken in Shanghai, China. For the past 10 months, she has been living and working in Shanghai as an aupair for a Boston couple with three young children.

Several days ago, she told me she was going to be visiting the Shanghai world's fair. I asked her to write some of her impressions of her visit to the World's Fair. This is her report.

She graduated from Henderson High School almost exactly five years ago on this day. It seems amazing how far she has traveled in just five short years. Nothing could symbolize that sentiment more than her report from Shanghai. Me, her mom and siblings and many of her old friends look forward to seeing her at the end of June and of hearing more about her adventures in China these past 10 months.

Isabel's report from Shanghai:

I’ve been in Shanghai for 10 months and it is impossible not to get swept up in the frenzy and excitement of the World Expo. Haibao, the expo’s jolly blue mascot, is scattered by the thousands around the city. The city has been remodeling 24/7 in preparation; expanding, cleaning, building, planting, painting, de-Chinglish-izing, and convincing Shanghainese not to wear quilted pjs outside on the street.

A large clock at the central transportation hub of the city counted down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the highly anticipated opening of the Expo on May 1st. With all the intense hype here, I assumed the rest of the world was equally absorbed in the Christmas-like splendor of the Expo. “What do you mean, you haven’t heard of the World Expo?!” I retorted to friends from home when they admitted ignorance of the event. “It’s only the world convergence of technology innovation, a forum to showcase new ideas and highlight the advancements of each country…” But then again, maybe I’ve been sipping too much of Shanghai’s Haibao-blue Kool aid.

I originally planned to spend a few hours casually walking around the expo. My Chinese friend Sully was appalled by this plan, and stated that it was an absolute waste of a ticket to spend less than an entire day experiencing it. We arrived at 9:30 am for the day’s opening, herded with thousands of other visitors past metal detectors and security screening. The Chinese expo volunteers smiled broadly and looked sheepishly excited to try out their English on a real foreigner.

Looking around, I was hard pressed to see another foreign face. Shanghai’s campaign for its citizens to learn some English phrases in preparation for foreign visitors paid off and many Chinese expo goers approached me smiling saying, “Hello! Where are you from? Welcome to Shang-hai!” They were equally surprised when I answered back, “Ni hao! Wu shi Meiguo ren.”

After spending almost one year in China, I’m pretty desensitized to crowds, but 600,000 people visited the expo on Sunday. That’s approximately the population of the city of Boston. It was a sea of people and we moved with the current even if that wasn’t our intended direction of travel. Everyone moved with purpose and excitement, racing through the gates to queue up for the different pavilions.

The atmosphere was festive and bubbling with excitement. Grown Chinese men looked child-like in their excitement as they plowed ahead through the crowds with wife and kid in tow. There were many families, but every age seemed to be represented. Teenagers with friends, companies treating their employees to the event, flag touting tour groups from all over China.

Lines for some pavilions stretched past four hours in length. I was half tempted to invite my friend’s grandmother just so we could get wheel chair priority and skip the lines. Sully and I avoided the expos big draws like Italy (with its designer cars and dresses), Switzerland (with a real alpine chair lift) and Belgium (with a working chocolate factory) and instead zoomed into lesser hyped, but still impressive pavilions, like Luxembourg, Slovenia and Czech Republic.

Large stages were set up around the expo and musicians from around the world played throughout the day. We listened to an acoustic guitarist from South Africa sing easy, soulful pop songs. In the African pavilion, a ten person drum troupe from Kenya performed as dancers twirled in red satin dresses. High school marching bands, dance troupes, choirs, orchestras, acrobatics will all be showcased throughout the Expo’s six month opening.

Almost every country’s pavilion had a café attached serving traditional food. There was a spectrum of foods and prices. Both Italy and France had beautiful sit down restaurants with legitimate chefs flown in for the occasion. Many of the pavilion gift shops sold fine wines and packaged food from their country. The expo offered everything from Chinese baozi (a bready dumpling) for less than $1, Western staples like McDonalds and Papa Johns, well known Shanghai restaurant chains like South Beauty, and even $100 a head fine dining options. After 6 hours walking around, Sully and I sprung for a grande Starbucks latte to rejuvenate.

I was impressed by each pavilion’s tri-lingual volunteers who switched effortlessly between welcoming visitors in Mandarin, English and their country’s native language. At the Australian pavilion, Chinese visitors broke out into delighted giggles and cheers when a red-headed 20 year old Aussie volunteer addressed the crowd in perfect Mandarin. The expo was stationed with hundreds of volunteers, all eagerly waiting someone to ask for directions or a pavilion recommendation.

Each pavilion seemed like a futuristic fete of architecture and art. Many featured impossibly large LED screens. Others looked like they sprung from the imagination of Dr. Seuss. Most pavilions represented their country with 3-D videos, photographs and interactive exhibits. Some exhibits just seemed like a travel brochure advertising the touristic appeal of their country, but most pavilions used technology creatively to showcase their country and represent their vision for the future.

As the sun set, the pavilions were ablaze in a spectacle of colors. Most families headed home around this time; tuckered kids asleep on parents’ shoulders, still clutched Haibao souvenirs. Singapore was our last pavilion for the night and I struggled to stay awake in the darkened theater as four Singaporean pop stars serenaded us on a 3-D screen. We walked out feeling satisfied but exhausted. 12 hours, 20 pavilions, and one extra-large coffee later, I left the expo having only seen a fraction of it.

A perfectly imperfect game -- why baseball still matters

By now you have probably seen this picture: the crestfallen and humbled ump, his eyes rimmed red with emotion, shaking hands with the young pitcher who lost his chance at history when the same ump blew a close call at first base on the final play of the game on Wednesday.

Jim Joyce (the man in black) and Detroit pitcher Armando Galaragga, forever will be linked in baseball lore for their roles in this episode. And nothing could be a better advertisement for baseball, the grandest sport of all.

Just four days after Phillies' ace Roy Halladay pitched the 20th perfect game in the history of the major leagues, Galaragga took his perfect game into the ninth inning. He got two quick outs and, on a 1-1 pitch, raced to cover the first base bag when Chicago shortstop Jason Donald hit a high chopper to the right side of the infield. Detroit's first baseman (who probably should have stayed at his position and let the second basemen handle the ball) knew the hitter was fleet and that the play needed a quick ending. He hit Galaragga in stride at the bag with a hard, quick throw.

The pitcher's foot came down awkwardly at the rear of the bag (possibly obscuring Joyce's view of the play) and a raucous Detroit crowd cheered history in the making -- until Joyce crossed his arms in the universal sign for "safe"..... and the game continued. Galaragga's manager, the esteemed Jim Leyland, heatedly argued the call, but Galaragga just gave the umpire an impish smile, as if to say: "I think you might have missed that one ump."

His reaction to this catastrophe (how often do you miss making history by a heartbeat? By another person's mistake?) spoke volume about his character and about the sport itself. He smiled at his misfortune! He didn't utter a single word of protest. You just had to love him for that. No posturing. No red veins popping out of his neck. He was just a guy who seemed content in knowing he had just thrown a perfect game but that human error had cost him a place in the record books: and that was okay.

What a lesson for the fans, especially Little Leaguers and their hyper-competitive parents!!

In slow motion, it's obvious Joyce missed the call. In fairness to Joyce, it's a lot easier to make this call in slow motion. In the heat of the moment, with history hanging in the balance, it's a heck of a lot harder to be right. Joyce apologized and, to his credit, admitted his mistake publicly.

To his credit, Galarraga accepted his apology and moved on. He patted Joyce on the shoulder when he gave the ump his team's line-up card at home plate before last night's game. The umpire shook his hand and returned the pat, albeit a little more emphatically than Galaragga's tap.

This morning, one of the announcers on ESPN noted that the blown call at first base will likely cost the pitcher several hundred thousand dollars in autograph opportunities over the span of his big league career.

The Tigers gave him a red convertible for his near miss with history.

He got something a lot more valuable than money and a brand new car if you ask me.

Armando Galaragga always will be known as a stand up guy, a player who loves and respects the game so much he didn't complain when history eluded his grasp.

There is no Hall of Fame for decency and human kindness. But people don't forget such acts. We celebrate them. They are bigger than perfect games.