Hey Blue! What Game Are You Watching?

Nobody's perfect. Let's start with that. We all make mistakes. Some are inconsequential, but some can ruin lives.

Baseball is a game. It's not life and death. But it is also a game of rules. Without the rules it would, like anything else be nothing but chaos. Last night's Yankees-Angels game got pretty chaotic.

I can easily understand an umpire missing a bang-bang play at a base, or calling a pitch traveling at nearly 100 MPH on the edge of the strike zone a ball happens. A throw arriving from 300 feet away to be caught and then applied to a sliding runner arriving at the same moment can be a difficult at best. Wearing blue can be a tough job.

It's even tougher when a stadium full of fans and millions more watching on television know that among the foundational rules of the game is that if you're not on the base you're not safe, and everyone in the universe sees it happen but the umpire standing feet away.



As the catcher Napoli applied both tags I screamed, "Double play!" (I'm pulling for the Halos, but my hope level is pretty low right now). I thought I saw a most unusual double play. Two runners, neither touching third base were tagged out by the catcher. I know I saw it. So did you if you watched the game. And that's the rule. Both guys are out. It wasn't close. A Little League umpire would have made the right call.

But not last night. It was in so many ways a less than perfect game. But it's just a game.

There is an Umpire who gets every call right every time. He never misses a play. His strike zone is consistently the same. He not only knows the rules, He wrote them. Arguing His calls does no good because He always wins.

Grace is a great thing.