Remember this face. It's the one that robbed Armando Galarraga of immortal baseball glory. Courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

A few minutes ago, a major event occurred in baseball. The 21st perfect game in Major League history happened in Detroit. Starter Armando Galarraga put together an incredible outing, preventing 27 consecutive hitters from reaching base. There was one problem, though. An umpire called the 27th and final batter safe when instant replays demonstrate that he was, in fact, out.

Jim Joyce. Before tonight, nobody knew his name. He is an umpire for Major League Baseball, an important figure but not one that generally has a place in the spotlight. He will be recognized for the rest of his life, though, after he was the reason for one of the greatest travesties in sports in many years.

So why is this moment such a big deal? This missed call did not affect the result of the game. However, baseball, more than any other sport, has an established tradition where statistics are valued quite highly. The number 61 (Roger Maris’s single-season home run record) held significance for decades, as did 755 (Hank Aaron’s career home run record). Making the 500 Home Run Club or the 300 Win Club will generally be enough to get a player into the Hall of Fame. Thus, tonight’s tragedy cannot be underestimated.

This game would have been the 3rd perfect game in only a month. Never in Major League baseball’s history (over 100 years) have there been three perfect games in a month. In fact, there have never been three perfect games in one season! The feat of Armando Galarraga, when combined with the exploits of Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay (his two fellow perfect-game hurlers from this season), would have been an important statistic that young baseball fans would learn for years to come.

The worst part is that Jim Joyce will forever be known as “the guy who screwed over Armando Galarraga.” That isn’t fair to him. He acknowledged his mistake right away, calling it “the most important call of my career” and saying that he missed it. He said, “I had a great angle on it, I just missed the damn call.  I missed it from here, to the wall.” Despite this acknowledgement, Detroit fans will likely be making makeshift dart boards out of Jim Joyce’s pictures and burning his image in effigy for years to come. He made one mistake, but it could easily have been avoided.

We can take away something from this series of events that has been true for a long time: instant replay needs to be utilized in baseball to review questionable calls. It is no longer debatable. The lack of this tool led to an uncorrectable, tragic event that changes baseball’s history for good. If the MLB had decided to institute instant replay one of the many times that it was discussed, this entire situation could have been avoided. In the NFL, there is the new “challenge” policy where coaches can attempt to overturn questionable calls, and this rule has been quite helpful in that league. In tennis, players can do the same. Often, the results of those challenges can have a direct impact on the result of a game or match, and this would be true in baseball as well.

When possible rule adjustments are debated next time around, this issue will be a pressing one. Hopefully, the MLB’s proponents for “tradition” will realize that it is more important to be a proponent of common sense. If they choose to do so, the awful scenarios of baseball’s future, like tonight’s, will be avoided. The MLB needs to find a way to take something positive away from this awful situation, and instant replay would be the easy solution.