Nobody's Perfect (Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History)

The perfect game is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. No hits, no walks, no men reaching base. Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down. In nearly four hundred thousand contests in more than 130 years of Major League Baseball, it has only happened twenty times. On June 2, 2010, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga threw baseball’s twenty-first perfect game. Except that’s not how it entered the record books.

That’s because Jim Joyce, a veteran umpire with more than twenty years of big league experience, missed the call on the final out at first base. “No, I did not get the call correct,” Joyce said after seeing a replay. “I kicked the sh*t out of it.” But rather than throw a tantrum, Galarraga simply turned and smiled, went back to the mound and took care of business. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said later in the locker room.

In Nobody’s Perfect, Galarraga and Joyce come together to tell the personal story of a remarkable game that was will live forever in baseball lore, and to trace their fascinating lives in sports up until this pivotal moment.