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

Nobody's Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History by Galarraga, Armando. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780802119889.

The Detroit Tigers, an umpire, a pitcher, and a mistake—one of the "classic, human, baseball stories" (Ken Burns, creator of the PBS mini-series Baseball). The perfect game is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. In nearly four hundred thousand contests in over 130 years, it has happened only twenty times. On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga threw baseballs twenty-first. Except thats not how it entered the record books. Thats because Jim Joyce, voted the best umpire in the game in 2010 and 2011, missed the call on the final out. But rather than throwing a tantrum, Galarraga simply turned and smiled, went back to the mound, and finished the game. "Nobodys perfect," he said later in the locker room. "You might think everything that could have been said, replayed, and revealed about that night has already been uttered, logged, and exposed. You would, however, be as wrong as the unfortunate Mr. Joyce" (The Detroit News). In Nobodys Perfect, Galarraga and Joyce come together to tell the personal story of a remarkable game that will live forever in baseball lore, and to trace their fascinating lives in sports. The result is "a masterpiece", an absorbing insiders look at two careers in baseball, a tremendous achievement, and an enduring moment of pure grace and sportsmanship (The Huffington Post).