ESPN to air documentary on class project exploring near-perfect game. Professor featured in '28 Outs' is now at UNM

Major league pitcher Armando Galarraga’s near perfect game more than a decade ago has sparked much controversy and debate and is now the backbone of an ESPN special airing on Sunday.

The documentary is structured around professor Lawrence Jones’ class at Monmouth University investigating Galarraga’s outing. The class project got the attention of MLB officials, including Commissioner Rob Manfred.

Jones, now an adjunct political science professor at the University of New Mexico, tasked his law and society class in 2021 to take a hard look at the issues surrounding the June 2, 2010 game in which Detroit Tigers pitcher Galarraga retired the first 26 Cleveland Indians. The 27th batter, Jason Donald, hit a grounder to the left of first baseman Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera fielded the ball and threw it back to Galarraga at first, who touched the base before Donald.

First base umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly called Donald safe. MLB instant replay rules at the time did not allow officials to look at whether runners beat the throw to first base. Galarraga got the next batter out and the Tigers won 3-0.

Jones’ class produced an 82-page report explaining why Galarraga should be added to the list of pitchers who had completed a perfect game, which at that time had been done just 21 other times, making it one of the most rare feats in the sport.

“The reason I thought of the Armando Galarraga case had nothing whatsoever to do with baseball,” Jones said. “But rather all of the lessons, legal, social, cultural, historical lessons that really derived grew from that story, and why that story became so internationally famous and watched for a long period of time, and why it’s still one of the most contested issues in American sports history.”

In the ESPN E60 report “28 Outs: An Imperfect Story,” Jones, as well as several class members, is interviewed, as are Galarraga, Joyce, Manfred and Donald. All of them said during the interviews that Donald was in fact out, something that video shows quite clearly.

Manfred was so impressed with the students’ work that he wrote them a letter and arranged a Zoom call with the class to explain his decision to uphold the original evaluation of the situation by then-commissioner Bud Selig.

“A reversal of the true historical record of what occurred on the field under the rules that were in place at that time would open up a Pandora’s box of issues in the history of the game where past and future errors would constantly be vulnerable to scrutiny and dispute,” Manfred wrote in his letter.

The idea behind the project, Jones said, was not so much to get the result changed, but simply to get Galarraga the recognition he was denied for his achievement.

“The point is to try to make some change and use logic and reason to get to that point. Well, I thought the Galarraga case would be very good for that,” he said. “I think uniformly, most people feel that Armando Galarraga did pitch a perfect game that day in 2010 and unfairly, did not receive credit for. … He didn’t get credit for pitching a perfect game, even though everyone saw him do it.”

The class was designed for pre-law or political science students, but also anyone whose career might include issues of advocacy like psychology, education, politics, legislation or child support services, Jones said.

“The real point of college and going to a university is during the four years when they’re maturing and growing and flourishing from becoming teenagers to adults with possible plans to become professionals in one area or another, it would be helpful if they had some experience in real life,” he said. “Experience and advocating for certain causes that might be of interest to them so that when they got out in the real world, they saw that a lot of things are possible when you step up to that.”

So the 16 students, while not necessarily baseball fans, zealously dove into the topic, examining such prior cases in baseball history such as the George Brett pine tar game. In that 1983 game between the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees, umpires overturned Brett’s home run with two outs in the ninth inning because he had too much pine tar on his bat. The decision was later rescinded by then American League president Lee MacPhail and 25 days later the teams resumed play from that point.

“People talk about slippery slopes and stuff like that, can of worms, a Pandora’s box,” Jones said. “And if you do something on this case, you have to do it on all these other cases. But the truth of the matter is, and this is where the legal analysis comes in, when you’re in court and you talk about history and precedent, you’ve got to look at whether the past cases match up to the present case, because if they don’t, it’s like comparing apples and oranges. There is not a single case in baseball history before the Galarraga case that the students could find, or that anyone could find, baseball historians, where both teams and the umpire agreed the call was wrong.”

And seeing the issue picked up by ESPN E60, an investigative show that has earned multiple Emmy Awards, for an hour-long special, just shows how deeply people still feel about the issue even years after the fact, he said.

“Quite honestly, this story goes way beyond sport, in my opinion,” Jones said. “It involves right and wrong. It involves legal issues, cultural issues, social issues. To me, and this is reflected by the students in this, this is not just for sports fans. And ESPN agreed with this.”

Jones, a former New Jersey superior court judge, is in his third semester at UNM. This fall, he’s teaching a class titled Law in the Political Community, in which he’ll incorporate an issue that bridges society, culture and law for his class to study in depth.