One of the most famous lines in any movie is uttered by the inimitable Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks in a League of Their Own. Dugan says to a player of his who is crying (and happens to be a woman) that “There’s no crying in baseball”.
I’ve made a censored version of the video and embedded it below if you have no idea what I am talking about.
I’ve never quite understood why there is no crying in baseball, nor why this line is so famous. It doesn’t even make any sense to me. And yet, here we are. Everyone knows there’s no crying in baseball and no one knows why.
Try telling Jim Joyce and Armando Galarraga that there is no crying in baseball.
Yesterday, Galarraga was one out away from Baseball Lore. He had pitched to 26 batters and sent each one of those batters back to the dugout. He was one out from the 21st (recorded) Perfect Game in Major League Baseball History. Then this happened:
Click here to see the debacle unless you’ve already seen the play. (I would embed the video but ESPN has disabled embedding for that clip and MLB does not allow embedding of their videos and they take all youtube.com videos down, you know, God forbid, people would share baseball videos and expand their fandom…)
To explain: The 27th batter was out. The umpire called him safe. He apologized. But he was tearful. WHAT? THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!
Anyway, I am not here to talk about crying. I am here to talk about fixing mistakes.
Major League Baseball reviewed the play and agreed that it was an erroneous call.
So they should just fix it right? Call the 27th batter out and give Galarraga his perfect game.
Sorry. No can do. If a human error decides a game or denies someone their place in history it is too late. There is nothing that can be done.
Art imitates life. So does sport. When we make a mistake in life there is nothing we can do to undo the mistake. There is no crtl-z (cmd-z for us mac people), there is no instant replay and reversals. We live with our decisions.
One would expect that to be the same way a Divine Being would treat mankind. If you act, you suffer the consequences. Perhaps there may some mercy or amnesty, but your actions are still done. They cannot be undone.
In Judaism there is a concept called Teshuva. This is often mistranslated as “repentance”. That is not teshuva. Teshuva is return. Going through the process of teshuva one can return to the exact spot they were at before the act. It is a true return. The physical act is done and cannot be undone. But the spiritual effects of the action can be undone with teshuva.
Unfortunately, there is no crying in baseball and there is no teshuva in baseball either.
Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan in “A League of Their Own”.
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