Baseball call gets political

If you haven’t heard by now, while the Detroit Tigers won the game Wednesday night, a call by umpire Jim Joyce cost Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game. And since everyone in cyberland is chattering up the call, from Twitter to Facebook and beyond in the social networking world, how could Michigan politicians avoid entering the fray?

Of course, they couldn’t.

Attorney General Mike Cox, who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor, told WJR radio host Frank Beckmann that he was going to sue the umpire, reports MLIVE.com:

“I’m suing Jim Joyce for the call last night,” Cox joked with WJR’s Frank Beckmann during the 2010 Mackinac Policy Conference.

Of course that comes on the heels of Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm announcing she was declaring the game a “perfect game” in spite of the call from Joyce. She went so far as to issue an official proclamation to that effect.

“Whereas, pitching a perfect game is considered one of the crowning achievements of sport, attained only 20 times in the history of Major League Baseball; and,

“Whereas, a perfect game is defined as when a pitcher or pitchers retire each batter during the course of a game lasting at least nine innings; and,

“Whereas, Armando Galarraga retired all 27 players in order, a feat no Tigers pitcher has ever accomplished; and,

“Whereas, an umpire’s missed call resulted in Armando Galarraga being charged a hit that clearly should have been an out; and,

“Whereas, the umpire graciously admitted his mistake after the game ended; and,

“Whereas, video replays unmistakably show Galarraga to have retired all batters;

“Now, Therefore, be it Resolved that I, Jennifer M. Granholm, governor of the state of Michigan, do hereby declare Armando Galarraga to have pitched a perfect game, and I join Tigers fans all across the globe in saluting his unassailable accomplishment — the first perfect game in Tigers history.”

And while Cox, Granholm and the legislature continue to frolic on Mackinac Island this week attending the Detroit Chamber of Commerce Policy Conference, the state still has not passed its budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year which begins in October, and local governments are tossing the dice, reading the tea leaves and consulting the oracles in an attempt to finalize their budgets — without any idea what state aid will look like — in time for their July 1 deadlines.