Sean Kirst speaks with a former umpire and lifelong poet about the perfect-game-that-wasn’t.
We live in a time, Card said, in which people want instant replays, “do-agains,” the quick fix. But baseball has never lent itself to painless answers. “You’ve got to step back,” Card said, “and appreciate the larger sense of what this was.”
It was an act of human failing followed by colossal grace, which Card sees as proof enough of a perfect game.
I see. So somehow, the few seconds that it takes the NFL and NHL to make sure a close call was right are disrupting the poetry of their games. Uh huh.
@ Joseph J. Finn — I remain undecided about introducing more replay review into baseball, but have to say, as someone who was in favor of the NFL using it, I do now find it disruptive, aggravating and annoying in the NFL. It takes forever, it doesn’t address half of the obvious mistakes, and it still seems to me the refs often get it wrong even with reply. It rarely takes a few seconds. And I also object to the system that grants a coach a limited number of challenges — if the point is to get it right. And yes, even though there is little poetry in the start and stop game of US football, the way reply is used in that game does take some of the — if not poetry, then rhythm and music — out of the NFL.
Review of a goal/potential goal in the NHL does not bother me, though. Perhaps because it is more rare, and only when the flow of the game has stopped anyway.
I’ll take an actual perfect game over a metaphoric one any day.
@Capybara: Thank you! Replay is a DISASTER in football. I get the impression that Mr. Finn has never watched an American football game. As for the NHL (and NBA, for that matter), they use replay in the entirely limited manner as baseball currently does. If you want baseball to become like an NFL game as far as replay goes, you must hate baseball.
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