Socially Speaking

By now, everyone in Detroit — and most baseball fans — have heard about Armando Galarraga’s perfect game that wasn’t, and how umpire Jim Joyce robbed the kid of history. In what may be destined to be the most famous umpiring mistake in baseball history, the 27th out of Galarraga’s feat was called safe when Joyce decided that Jason Donald had reached first base before the Tigers’ pitcher. Replays clearly showed otherwise.

The results were predictable. On the field, Tigers players and manager Jim Leyland barked angrily at Joyce through the next batter and the end of the game. The fans mercilessly booed and jeered the ump. Online, groups proclaiming Joyce incompetent and calling for his job sprung up on Facebook within 10 minutes (I know; I joined several); Joyce’s Wikipedia entry was altered to proclaim him “the very worst umpire in baseball history;” Joyce was quickly a higher trending topic on Twitter than even Galarraga himself, and a @FakeJImJoyce feed quickly sprung up, tweeting such gems as “Anyone have any more dreams they’d like crushed?” (The account was disabled or taken down within an hour.) I’ll freely admit to being part of the chorus; the baseball fan in me was indignant at the injustice of Joyce’s blown call — Galarraga is never going to pitch that great a game again, and Joyce effectively robbed him of the crowning achievement of his professional career. On ESPN and other sports outlets, cries were raised about the need for instant replay in baseball. (I agree, for what it’s worth.)

But a funny thing happened on the way to ignominy. Class shined through. 

Joyce looked at the replays when he got to the locker room, realized with horror his mistake… and then called the Tigers locker room seeking out Galarraga, wanting only to apologize to him. Galarraga heard that Joyce wanted to talk to him… and met the ump, hugging him and accepting his apology. Tigers manager Leyland, who’d furiously berated Joyce at game’s end, reminded reporters that no one involved felt worse than Joyce did. Tigers players spent the rest of the night talking about how respected Joyce is by players as a good umpire, and how they knew the man had just made a mistake.

I’ve watched this all play out and have been thinking about the lessons for the business world in this incident. First of all, Jim Joyce showed businesses how it’s supposed to be done. On the field, he took responsibility for his call, not leaving the field in a rush after the game but standing there to take on the Tigers’ anger for the perceived injustice. Then, when Joyce saw the replay and knew that he’d been wrong, he immediately apologized. Didn’t wait for the league offices to make a statement. Didn’t wait for a suspension or reprimand from MLB or the umpires union. Didn’t wait till he got caught; he saw that he was wrong, and he apologized — to Galarraga, to Leyland, to the Tigers, to the media. You want a textbook definition of accepting responsibility and being accountable? That just might be it. Businesses would do well to aspire to such levels of transparency; when you get something wrong, admit it and apologize.

On the other side, the players — even the one most grievously wronged — recognized the sincerity of Joyce’s words. No one accused the ump of only saying sorry because he wanted to avoid league action. No player argued that Joyce was only trying to protect his own skin. They all reminded reporters that Joyce is held in high regard for his skills, and pointed out that at the time Joyce really believed he’d made the right call (even if he was the only one in Comerica Park who felt that way). They all said, “let’s forgive the man, because people make mistakes.” One would hope that audiences in broader contexts would react similarly, accepting sincere apologies from a business or organization when they’re offered and remembering the integrity displayed on a usual basis by the offending party. Companies, like people, can make mistakes; the sin is in denying the mistake, not making it, and sincere regrets and apologies should be accepted.

Joyce’s previous conduct, skill and integrity, as well as his quick acceptance of responsibility for his mistake, earned him the empathy and forgiveness of the players whose careers he’d affected. The players involved had the class to recognize that even the best-intended people can make an egregious mistake from time to time, and they were equally quick to defend the umpire after the game. One should hope that we’d all behave this way in business situations and in life.

It just goes to show the beauty of imperfection.