{"id":589,"date":"2010-06-04T19:16:06","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T23:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=589"},"modified":"2010-06-04T19:16:06","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T23:16:06","slug":"perfect-game-pitcher-nobodys-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/perfect-game-pitcher-nobodys-perfect\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Game Pitcher: "Nobody's Perfect""},"content":{"rendered":"

Even those who find American baseball deadly dull will acknowledge the grip the sport has had on the American imagination.\u00a0 Its impact on the American language alone is beyond cavil, and students of the sport have been moved to profound philosophical observations.\u00a0 Now it has contributed to our understanding of conflict management.<\/p>\n

“Baseball is like church,” said Dodger manager Leo “the Lip” Durocher<\/a>, “many attend,\u00a0 few understand.”\u00a0 “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” Yogi Berra<\/a> is alleged to have said, along with\u00a0smackers that\u00a0capture the\u00a0core truth\u00a0of the entertainment industry:\u00a0“If people don’t want to come to a ball game, you can’t stop ’em” and “That restaurant is so crowded nobody goes there any more.”<\/p>\n

(These\u00a0Yogi-isms have entered American myth, but are impossible to prove.\u00a0 As he himself protested,\u00a0 “I didn’t really say everything I said.”\u00a0 Yogi lives in my town of Montclair, New Jersey, and his directions to get to\u00a0his house are absolutely accurate:\u00a0 “Go along Edgewood Road, and when you come to\u00a0a fork in the road, you take it.”)<\/p>\n

More to the point of this essay is Bart Giamatti<\/a>‘s famous warning:\u00a0 “Baseball breaks your heart.\u00a0 It’s designed to break your heart.”\u00a0 And it has done it again.<\/p>\n

Young Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers pitched a perfect game the other day — 27 batters, three per inning for all nine innings, and got out every one.\u00a0 This feat had been accomplished only 18 times in baseball history until this year.\u00a0 The 27th batter boinked a grounder to the infield; the first-baseman grabbed it and Galarraga himself ran over to first base, caught the ball a full stride before the runner with his own foot on the base and jumped in ecstasy….<\/p>\n

Until he saw that the umpire called the runner safe.\u00a0 The man was now on base, the perfect game would not be had, and history had blown a kiss and fled.<\/p>\n

A moment of incredulity paralyzed the kid, and then… he smiled.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

As you see in the clip above, the kid smiled as only someone about to get hit by a truck could smile.\u00a0 His fate was known, his joy was gone, and it was time to live with the memory of what had happened — he was reconciled to the fact that he would never have the thing he deserved.<\/p>\n

So blatant was the umpire’s mistake that even he knew it.\u00a0 Within minutes of the game’s ending he\u00a0went to the Tiger’s locker room and personally apologized to Galarraga.<\/p>\n

Now, baseball is surely the most over-regulated game imaginable.\u00a0 Every play is called safe or out.\u00a0 Every pitch to\u00a0every batter is adjudicated either within or outside the hittable zone.\u00a0 Every hit ball is declared fair or foul.\u00a0 And while all players are demerited with “errors” for their mistakes, the umpires never are.<\/p>\n

It would be entirely understandable to appeal this game to the Baseball Commissioner.\u00a0 To condemn the umpire at fault.\u00a0 To insist on instant replays of close (or in this case not-so-close) plays.\u00a0 To “get it right.”\u00a0 It would certainly be understandable if fists and spit flew; it has happened before.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

But that’s not what happened this time.\u00a0 When he was interviewed after the game, Galarraga said he knew the umpire was a veteran, was doing his best, and had made a mistake.\u00a0 “Nobody’s perfect,” said the perfect-game pitcher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And at the start of the next day’s game, Detroit’s manager didn’t go out to hand the line-up card to the umpire, as is customary.\u00a0 He sent Galarraga.\u00a0 The pitcher gave the\u00a0ump the card and shook his hand, and the ump wept<\/a>.\u00a0 “Play ball” went the shout, and Major League Baseball moved on.<\/p>\n

There are at least two\u00a0hard truths nestled in all this sentiment, from the perspective of a problem-solver and a conflict manager.\u00a0 One is that\u00a0it’s better when you recognize, early on, when things are out of your hands and beyond your control.\u00a0 Whether they are fair<\/em><\/strong> is an independent consideration: if they are beyond correction, then rational\u00a0 options are narrow and should be accepted as being narrow.<\/p>\n

The second is a saying even older than Bart, Yogi and Leo the Lip.\u00a0 American notions of justice and the assurances of vindication notwithstanding,<\/p>\n

“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise… but time and chance\u00a0happeneth to them all.”\u00a0 Ecclesiastes<\/em> 9:11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent incident in American baseball holds rich lessons for students of conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-resolution"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}