By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN WEST — Miles away from the Motor City, New Yorkers still had strong and varied reactions to MLB umpire Jim Joyce's incorrect call that cost Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers a perfect game against the Cleveland Indians Wednesday night.
Tigers pitcher Galarraga was one out away from pitching a perfect game when Joyce ruled that Jason Donald was safe at first base on a ground ball to the right side. Joyce subsequently admitted that he was wrong and gave Galarraga a tearful apology in the middle on the field the following day.
"It was heartbreaking," said Trevor Noren, 29, of Brooklyn.
"That's a terrible, terrible thing to have to go through. This is his job and he made about the biggest mistake you could make," Noren said.
Washington Heights resident Jaime West, 31, said the whole incident made her angry.
"It really made my blood boil," West said. "This guy is a pretty unremarkable pitcher and he has this chance to do something amazing and then the ump totally ruins it for him."
Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig did not overturn the incorrect call, but in a statement released on Thursday afternoon, he did commit to consider the expanded use of instant replay after a number of umpiring controversies recently.
Baseball fan Doug Currin, 29, who was in town from Pennsylvania, thought that Selig made the right decision by letting the umpire's mistaken call stand.
"If he overturns one that's going to open the window for a lot more to be overturned later," Currin told DNAinfo.
Brooklyn resident Esteban Romero, 40, disagreed, saying that Galarraga, who was given a given a 2010 Corvette convertible by General Motors on Thursday, deserved his perfect game.
"Give the guy his perfect game," Romero said.
"I know he got a car and everything, but still it's going to go down as a one-hitter in the books, unfortunately for this guy."
