"I do not always like this, when another player is hungry. I like it when I am the only one who is hungry. Or when I am the most hungry," says Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga of his feelings about facing Trevor Crowe, the first batter up in the June 2, 2010, game he pitched against the Cleveland Indians. Crowe was soon out--and so began the game that will live in legend.
Galarraga continued to strike out batters and be backed up by his teammates' astonishing plays until, at the top of the ninth, he found himself just one out away from a perfect game. Galarraga sizes up Cleveland's Jason Donald: "I do not trust this rookie... He has something to prove, just like me."
As Galarraga tells it in this mesmerizing and emotionally complex revisit to that now-infamous game, the tension was nerve-racking. Then Donald connected with a pitch and ran, hell-bent on being the first man to reach base in this so-far perfect game.
A Detroit player fielded the ball and threw it to Galarraga, who was running to first base to tag Donald. Galarraga was feeling triumphant as he caught the ball and touched his foot to the base: the perfect game was his! But then first-base ump Jim Joyce made his infamous call: "SAFE!"
Nobody's Perfect achieves the remarkable feat of taking us inside the heads of both the pitcher and the umpire at the moment of that call, and during everything leading up to it. In alternating chapters, Galarraga and Joyce reveal what was behind their opaque game faces with surprising candor. Every revelation deepens our appreciation of their love of the game and seriousness of purpose in doing their jobs; with thrilling immediacy, Nobody's Perfect delivers the personal stories behind the public face of a game that will have its own page in baseball history.--John McFarland