The Wednesday Wizengamot is chiming in today on an issue that has bugged us for almost 15 years now and came up briefly last week in this space: Armando Galarraga and his perfect game. MLB needs to adjust the historical and statistical record here and do the right thing. All it means is altering one at-bat sequence in one game that had no impact on anything, other than the historical achievement it represented. Simple!

We’re not here to bag on Jim Joyce; humans make mistakes, even terrible ones that never should have happened. But Joyce’s jeofail is well documented; he blew it. Galarraga, to his credit, recovered and retired the 28th batter to complete the game, and the batter in question isn’t going to miss the one hit on his statistical profile. There is literally no negative consequence involved with the righting of this wrong. None.

We understand this could open up a huge can of worms in terms of situational context by not doing the same for others wronged in the past. We aren’t here to change any postseason outcomes, nor are we even advocating to change the winner of this specific game. This is a unique circumstance, and just because Bud Selig was too much of a cunt (forgive our language) to do anything about doesn’t change the reality. It’s time.

Current MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred can do a lot of good by taking unique action here: simply overrule Joyce’s terrible mistake and grant Galarraga his perfect game 15 years post de facto. All political jokes withstanding, sometimes executive orders can be undertaken without complication: this is one of those times. Everyone knows what happened, and we’re not talking about overtly rewriting history.

This is what needs to be done:

  • Amend the boxscore from June 2, 2010, to reflect what actually occurred on the diamond;
  • Change the batting records of Jason Donald and Trevor Crowe by one AB each (see below);
  • Galarraga’s pitch count gets reduced by five pitches, the effort spent to get Crowe out after the mistake.

That’s literally all that needs to be done. Donald ended up on third base during Crowe’s AB, but he didn’t get credit for stolen bases at the time, due to fielder indifference due to the situation. We don’t think Donald—who should have done a stronger job at telling Joyce he was out by a mile—will mind giving up one hit off his career .257 batting average, nor will Crowe mind giving up a hitless AB on his historical line (.218 BA).

One obvious reason we advocate for this, in addition to the primary factors, is that it doesn’t change anything significant in MLB history. The upside it is that does the right thing that should have been that day by Selig, and it puts Galarraga in the pantheon of all-time MLB accomplishments where he belongs, without an asterisk. So, we implore Manfred to figure this out in time for a 15th anniversary moment in June 2025.

That would be the moral-leadership ideal here, something Bart Giamatti would have done, for example.