Baseball, the Law and the Search for Perfection

Ted Frier at They Gave Us A Republic has a different take on the Detroit Tigers bad call:

Ever since humans crawled out of the jungle and began organizing complex societies they have tried to take the "human factor" out of decision-making as much as possible, whether its imparting the wisdom of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" to economic decisions, or appealing to the revealed truths of an "inerrant Bible" for ethical ones, or making uniform and impartial applications of the law the basis for the "blind justice" that governs interactions in the real world.

And for the most part these controls on self-centeredness and arbitrariness serve us well. So, it's understandable why so many baseball purists and traditionalists are worried about the potential plethora of "Pandora's Boxes" that might be opened up if Selig exercised his discretion and authority as commissioner -- his independent judgment -- and stepped in to set the record straight.

Yet, as every judge understands, there is a difference between the letter of the law and its spirit, for it is in the space between the two that we often find that elusive thing called Justice. And, surely, this ruined perfect game counts as a wrong that needs to be righted, an injustice that cries out for redress.

SNIP

In the larger scheme of things, the importance of Armando Galarraga's marred perfect game ranks low. But if on something this obvious and egregious, which should be an easy call, we allow ourselves to be mired in an unreasonable dogmatism - if we can't find a way to set even this clear-cut wrong to right without the planets of baseball's universe spinning out of orbit -- then God help us when we try to solve things that really matter.

Read the whole thing.