A Bad Call

A perfect game ... ruined!

Sports news has become national headline news over the past few days ... all because of a bad call. Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was one out away from pitching a perfect game. That’s right ... a perfect game! No hits, no walks ... no one from the opposing team ever making it to first base. Twenty-seven batters up, twenty-seven batters down! No wonder it’s considered the “holy grail” for baseball pitchers ... better than just a win, better than a shut-out, better even than a no-hitter. According to the baseball almanac, such a feat has only been accomplished 20 times in all of major league baseball’s illustrious history. And Galarraga, a 28 year old, three-year veteran from Venezuela was to be number 21 ... except the umpire at first base made a bad call! The runner was out ... but he called him safe! A perfect game is ruined by an umpire’s mistake with the 27th batter! If there’s tragedy in the game of baseball, this must be exactly what it looks like. After the fact, there was hope that the commissioner of baseball would reverse the call ... correct the umpire’s mistake and give the pitcher what he rightly deserved. Yesterday, the news reported that he wouldn’t do it ... the bad call would stand and perfection would remain lost.

Bad calls! If you’re a sports fan, you feel that umpires and referees make them all the time ... if you’re honest with yourself, you know that you do too. It’s different though, isn’t it? A bad call in baseball ... well, it’s still just a game. A bad call in life ... and wow, what a mess it becomes! Think of it for a moment – marriages can be destroyed, families can be devastated, health can falter, finances can fail, friends can be lost, jobs can be taken ... all because we made a bad call. After the fact, we can see the replay and know that we got it wrong, that we made a mistake – we shouldn’t have done that, we shouldn’t have responded that way, we shouldn’t have said what we said ... but after the fact doesn’t change the fact that we did. You know as well as I do, regardless of how much we’d like to or how much we wish we could ... we don’t get to change the call, we don’t get to un-do what’s been done. We have to live with the bad calls we’ve made ... and in turn then, we have to live as well with the regret and long list of unforeseen consequences that each one brings.

A bad call is a terrible thing, isn’t it? We know that it is and yet oddly enough, we’re still prone to making them way too often! The great apostle Paul even knew this for his own life – he says in Romans 7, “I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to—I do what I hate” ... in other words, Paul says, “I don’t want to. I try not to. But I make bad calls all the time!” Sound familiar? I think it’s true: Paul’s story is our story – we can’t help ourselves, we can’t prevent ourselves from messing things up ... we do it all the time. And like Paul then, we need help ... we need someone to save us from ourselves. After recognizing his bad-call-making nature, after recognizing the “wretched man” that he was because of that nature ... Paul saw his and our need for help and he saw exactly who it was that would help us – it’s Jesus Christ who can and who does! It’s Jesus who will forgive you for the bad calls and beyond even that, it’s Jesus that will help you to stop making them altogether!

The other day a bad call cost a pitcher his place in history. Don’t let the bad calls of your life today cost you your place in eternity. Run to Jesus ... He’ll correct the bad call and restore His perfection in you!