Blown Baseball Calls, and America’s Favorite Idol.

Unless you live in a cave, you are well aware of the national crisis that unfolded last week. Yes, I am talking about the blown call delivered by James Joyce. Tiger’s pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out from being the 21st pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game. That all came to an end when Joyce called a batter safe, who after viewing the replay, was clearly out. What followed was unbelievable.

The media went crazy. ESPN had more updates on the situation than Ashton Kutcher has updates on Twitter. Additionally Joyce’s wikipedia page was hacked and vandalized and a new website (firejimjoyce.com) was launched only moments after the historic botch. To make things worse, Bud Selig refused to award Galarraga his perfect game. This only seemed to pour more fuel on the raging fire of fan frenzy.

Here’s the deal. I could care less about baseball. Personally, I think it’s lame. Guys stand around for a few hours watching the pitcher and catcher play ball just waiting to be invited to actually do something. It’s pretty boring if you ask me. But that’s not my point here.

We Westerners absolutely hate authority. Umpires are idiots. They are not allowed to call it how they see it. Their calls are only authoritative if we agree with them. If not, there is hell to pay. This is true in nearly every element of American culture.

Have you ever tried to clean up a massive oil spill? Probably not. But somehow, we have all become experts on the issue this past month. BP is incompetent. The Government is incompetent. The President is incompetent. Leaders are dumb and don’t know what they are doing. This is how we feel about everything. It reveals one of our favorite idols in the West, autonomy.

Nobody will tell us what to do. We are our own authority. Umpires only exist to make the calls that we think they should make. They have no authority over the game. The fan, who is probably over weight, never played a single inning of baseball in their life, and is halfway to inebriation nation with overpriced light beer, holds that sacred position. We only listen to them when they agree with us. We are the final authority thank you very much. The point isn’t whether or not Joyce made the right call. The point is who gets to make that call.


What say you?