The Blown Call

A Major League Baseball pitcher was one out away from pitching a perfect game. In a perfect game, the pitcher doesn’t allow a single opposing batter to get to first base. A perfect game is a rare achievement.

Only about two dozen perfect games have ever been recorded. In baseball, it’s a big deal. One more out, and Armando Galarraga would have become only the twenty-first pitcher ever to accomplish that feat.

The pitcher pitched, the batter hit the ball, the fielder threw it to first base in time to beat the sprinting batter, and the pitcher had his perfect game.

Except that the first-base umpire ruled the batter safe! That mistake —and it was a mistake— cost the pitcher his perfect game and a place in sports history. But when Galarraga saw the batter was called safe, he simply smiled, went back to the mound, and got the next batter out.

A twenty-eight-out perfect game, if you would.

What would most people do if they were robbed of a place in history? Galarraga simply said of the mistaken umpire, “Nobody’s perfect. Everybody’s human. I understand.” He met with the umpire, who admitted he made a mistake and tearfully apologized.

The baseball player hugged him and forgave him, which in the emotionally charged world of professional sports is remarkable.* God asks us to exercise forgiveness, even when the other person is wrong and denies us something precious.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). In fact, Jesus said that if we refuse to forgive others, we cannot expect God to forgive us. It isn’t always easy to forgive, but it’s always important. When a man chose to forgive the woman who killed his seventy-five-year-old grandmother —a Bible teacher— it caused tension in his family.

There were those who didn’t believe he should forgive the killer.

Yet he said choosing to forgive brought him “tremendous healing.” Most people have some forgiving to do. And forgiveness is always best.

Forgiveness is God’s way.