Galarraga responded with a you've got to be kidding me smile for the ages, then retired one more batter for a one-hit shutout. He later said he hadn't argued because he was in shock.

But it was Joyce's response that turned this terrible tale into one that's almost heart-warming. Not as heart-warming as a journeyman pitcher tossing a perfect game, mind you, but pretty toasty.

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The entire conversation about umpiring has been predicated on the assumption that the only solution to the problem is a technological one, which is fascinating -- and maybe just a little troubling -- because everyone in the conversation knows two things: There are acres of room for improvement that has nothing to do with technology, and the technology itself is far from perfect.

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Ok, here's a smile: update on our doc on recession/poverty. I love America

http://bit.ly/btt50h

Here's the text you get when you "share" the video report Curry's tweeting about:

Overwhelming response to Dateline's poverty report

A development to the story we brought you about struggling families in Ohio who have been pushed over the edge by this recession. ††There's been a response from people wanting to help.

http://bit.ly/btt50h

So it's that old TV thing. NBC does a story on "Dateline" about families struggling through the recession in rural Ohio, and letters and donations and job offers come pouring in from all over the country.

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It was the worst blown call in Jim Joyce's history, that's for sure. And surely the worst in Galarraga's until-now ordinary baseball career. Because it merely affected a line in a record book -- Galarraga would have been the 21st pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game, dating to 1880 -- it lacks the historical heft of the greatest officiating mistakes.

View the slide show

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Harwell died Tuesday at 92, eight months after announcing that he had terminal cancer that he would not treat. John Lowe of the Detroit Free Press, in what will surely be the definitive obituary, quotes Harwell at the time: "I'm ready to face what comes. Whether it's a long time or a short time is all right with me because it's up to my Lord and savior."

I grew up not listening to Ernie Harwell but to the man who replaced him in the Brooklyn Dodgers booth in 1950, Vin Scully. I hadn't come to know Harwell until 1999, when baseball broadcasts were still streamed online for free and Harwell had returned to the radio side after five years on TV. Like generations of Michiganders, I quickly fell for his warmth, his charm, his knowledge of the game, his old-timey broadcast voice.

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He can do it now, in a beginner's sort of way, and he likes practicing. He's been bugging me a lot to play catch lately. He even wanted to stick around at the park after a practice the other night so he and I could throw the ball around a little. I asked him if that was because he wanted to practice and he said, "Yeah, and also because it's fun."

It is fun. I'd forgotten that. It's been coming back to me as we toss the ball back and forth, usually from only 40 feet or so. I just love playing catch. I always have.

I haven't done it much over the years. Warming up before softball games, mostly, which I also haven't done much lately. But even that's not quite what I mean by playing catch. Throwing the ball before a game serves a purpose. It's a warmup exercise. It's fun, but the best way to play catch is to play catch just to play catch.

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Here is a small sampling of notable comebacks in history, in the sports world and beyond.

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Wait, come back.

Neifi Pérez, shunned in Chicago, detested in Detroit, cursed in Kansas City, really was a legitimate big leaguer over a checkered twelve-year career that apparently ended in disaster when he was suspended twice for positive drug tests in 2007. And while I’ve beaten him up as much as any stathead -- even naming a statistic that measures futility after him -- and I join in making him scorned in San Francisco, I have also come around to genuinely admiring him. Life is complicated.

When I tell people that Neifi Pérez is my favorite player, I don’t exactly mean that I love Neifi Pérez the human being or even some idealized, media-created version of him as a human being, one who does good work in the community or happily signs autographs for the kids or jokes around winningly with the morning guys on the radio. I’m also not joking, though I will admit that my fascination with Neifi began as a goof.

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Thanks. I'm fine.

I have decided to end this column. I'd hoped to write about one of my favorite events, the first two days of the NCAA Tournament, publish an interview with Allen Barra about his Yogi Berra bio, then quietly fade away, happy on my ice floe. But I guess it's not going to happen that way. You're an inquisitive bunch.

I wanted to be quiet about it because while I enjoyed and appreciated the lovefest that followed my announcement late last year that this column would be switching from daily to part-time, I don't need another one and didn't want to look like I was fishing for one.

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Reuters/Ray Stubblebine

Listen to the interview with Allen Barra

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Allen Barra says a case can be made that 83-year-old Yogi Berra was the greatest catcher in baseball history. And no ex-ballplayer is more famous today, not even Willie Mays.

But a few years ago, fresh off a book about Bear Bryant, Barra noticed that there hadn't been a definitive bio of Yogi. He set out to fix that, and the result is the new "Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee."

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The good news around here is that I actually picked the upset that did happen in the second batch of games, No. 11 Dayton over No. 6 West Virginia in the Midwest. The Flyers took that one 68-60. In the other two games, No. 3 Missouri fought off a first-half challenge by No. 14 Cornell for an easy 78-59 win in the West and Arizona State overcame an off day by its best player, James Harden, to beat the one-man team Dionte Christmas -- who plays under the name Temple -- 66-57.

A pretty swingin' day of basketball so far. No upsets for the ages, but almost-upsets are almost as good. Upsets for the ages wouldn't be for the ages without the almosts. And it's nice when those middle of the bracket games, the ones between teams that don't have much better odds of winning the Tournament than North Dakota State or Stephen F. Austin, turn out to be good ones, as today's Tennessee-Oklahoma State and Utah State-Marquette games were.

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Not much in the way of upsets so far. I refuse to consider a 9-over-8 an upset, so Texas A&M over BYU doesn't count. Tenth-seed Maryland beat No. 7 Cal, which is officially an upset but didn't much look like one, and 10-over-7 usually isn't really one anyway.

I can drag out my well-worn theory here that a difference of three or four seeds in the middle of the bracket, a 7 vs. a 10 or an 8 vs. a 12, that sort of thing, is nothing. It has more to do with the biases of the Selection Committee and the small sample size of a season than the actual quality of the teams.

But I'm not going to do that.

The evening games offer some upset chances. A lot of people have Western Kentucky over Illinois in the South as their token 12-over-5 upset, and a few have No. 13 Akron, also in the South, over No. 4 Gonzaga.

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Rocky Mountain News

Listen to the interview with Tracy Ringolsby

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Tracy Ringolsby is a Hall of Fame baseball writer, honored in Cooperstown in 2005 with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. But late last month he was just one of about 200 editorial employees thrown out of work in Denver when the Rocky Mountain News closed.

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If only I could get my team to show up. Not likely: It's the WBC All-Withdrawal team. Check out this retiring first string:

1B Albert Pujols
2B Placido Polanco
SS Rafael Furcal
3B Evan Longoria
OF Vernon Wells
OF Grady Sizemore
OF Ryan Ludwick
DH Aramis Ramirez
 C Joe Mauer
SP Johan Santana, Carlos Zambrano, Francisco Liriano, Rich Harden, Scott Kazmir
RP Jonathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan, B.J. Ryan

I had to cheat a little. Furcal was never on the Dominican Republic roster and as far as I can tell wasn't invited. Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes and Miguel Tejada -- who withdrew! But then changed his mind and will play, darn it -- are the Dominican shortstops. And Mauer didn't withdraw from Team USA. He declined an invitation because he was recovering from surgery over the offseason.

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Until it's time to write the next book, I guess.

So just in the last week or so the mail has brought "When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball," Seth Davis' book about the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird NCAA title matchup in 1979, and "The Best Game Ever: Pirates 10, Yankees 9: October 13, 1960," Jim Reisler's tome about the World Series Game 7 that ended on Bill Mazeroski's home run.

Those have been tossed on the pile with "The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of '78" by Richard Bradley and my DVD copy of ESPN's recent "Greatest Game Ever Played," about the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants.

I want to make it clear I'm not commenting on the quality of any of these things. I haven't read any of the books and haven't seen the movie.

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I've been reading the letters section of Heather Havrilesky's Oscars recap and it seems the commenters are up in arms about the hyperactive camera work during Sunday night's tribute to filmmakers who died in 2008.

In case you got tired of watching previous winners toss verbal air-kisses at the nominees in the major acting categories and tuned out, the usual series of clips and still photos of the departed flashed in sequence on a giant screen onstage, but rather than showing that montage to us great unwashed, the Oscars producers treated us to a swooping, diving camera zooming in and out on the actual onstage screen.

On a TV screen smaller than the side of a jumbo jet, it was impossible to read the captions and see who was what. We all recognize Paul Newman, but who was that cinematographer?

Movie fans, this is known around here as "Show us the game!" Also known as "Point the camera at the ball!"

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The New York Yankees slugger apologized for his drug use, which he said was limited to the 2001-03 seasons, when he played for the Texas Rangers. News that he tested positive on what was supposed to be an anonymous drug test in 2004 was reported by Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated last week.

A-Rod kept using the unfortunate phrase "I'm here to take my medicine" as he apologized for his steroid use, blaming it on his being "young and stupid," another oft-repeated line.

Putting aside commissioner Bud Selig's idiotic posturing the other day that he'd consider sanctioning Rodriguez for the positive test, A-Rod doesn't appear to be in any great danger of being punished. It's no coincidence that his press conference was the most illuminating steroids confessional to date.

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OK, campers, rise and shine. It's the second annual Brett Favre Retirement Day and you don't want to miss a minute of it.

The great quarterback has told the New York Jets that he's retiring after his 18th season in the NFL, same thing he did after his 17th season. Brett Favre retires more often than a narcoleptic mattress tester, so rather than write a whole new postmortem, I'm just going to point you to last year's version.

Let's see: Joke, transcended the game, people not believing he's really retiring, the Streak, lovable everyman image, annual diva routine, might change his mind but it looks like this is really it.

Yup, still good.

See you in a few weeks, Brett.

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That moment is not going to happen in the wake of the weekend's revelation by Sports Illustrated that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003. We've known for a long time that no one ever stops being hysterical when the subject is Alex Rodriguez. But it will happen.

How many times will the commentariat be able to dust off the old shocked outrage as another star is branded as a juicer? Jayson Stark of ESPN wrote a piece headlined "A-Rod has destroyed game's history." Is that all?

"We've arrived at this sad and tragic place," Stark wrote, "where the players missing from the Hall of Fame will tower over the men who are actually in the Hall of Fame."

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Let's dig in, shall we?

Big Paulie: Were the two TD drives by the Cardinals in the 4th Quarter enough to cement Kurt Warner as a Hall of Fame QB, in spite of the fact that they lost?

Up till that point, I'd say he had lost some of his HOF luster. But after the last score, he was looking like he belongs.

The Brad: Whether Warner deserves enshrinement ... Should not be decided by two drives in a Super Bowl.

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