Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The newsletter that delivers baseball history on a daily basis for the best price in town.

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Today's story is about a pitcher whose moment of glory was stolen by a bad call.

The date is June 2, 2010.

Armando Galarraga had been painting all afternoon for the Detroit Tigers, and he was only one out away from finishing a masterpiece.

Then this happened.

"Shocked" doesn't even begin to describe the reaction from the fans and everyone on the field.

There's really only two ways to handle this: laugh it off like Galarraga did, or lose your f**king mind.

But you know the saying:

Joyce realized his mistake after the game and made a public apology on the radio.

There was a lot of debate after the game about whether or not MLB should overturn the call, especially given the circumstances.

The commissioner declined to give Galarraga the pefecto and it sparked major outrage. 

Ultimately, Galarraga accepted Joyce's apology and handled this whole thing like a class act.

And you have to applaud Joyce for accepting responsibility and essentially "manning up."

The two shared a beautiful moment the next day when Armando brought out the lineup card before the game.

They shook hands, and that was that.

Of course, we know that if this happened today, Galarraga would have his perfect game.

This call was definitely one of the incidents that laid the ground work for instant replay, and Jim Joyce was one of the biggest supporters of that change.

But really, this story is bigger than baseball.

It's a reminder of the human side of sports, and the importance of accountability, resilience, and good sportsmanship.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

McCool's last game in the bigs was right before his 26th birthday.

Overall, his career wasn't great, but his season in '66 was a bright spot.

He was an all-star that year, and ended with a 2.48 ERA.

After he retired, Billy dropped some fire on the baseball world when he released his first-and-only book The Billy McCool Pitching Digest: A Guide to Effective Baseball Pitching.

It's not at the top of my reading list, or in the top 10, but it exists nonetheless.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Breaking Point: All-Star pitcher Donnie Moore commits suicide

• The Death Row All Stars: Playing ball to stay alive

• The Kid's Catch: How fan interference helped the Yankees kick off a dynasty

That's it for today. Tomorrow we're back at it like a bad habit. See ya!

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