Detroit Tigers

6 years ago, this Detroit Tigers pitcher was tragically robbed of a perfect game

Published Jun. 2, 2016 6:45 p.m. ET

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Armando Galarraga is a name probably only baseball diehards will immediately recognize.

He spent parts of six seasons in the big leagues with the Rangers, Tigers, Diamondbacks and Astros, amassing a total of 0.4 wins above replacement in that span. He played in the minor leagues in 2013, Taiwan in 2014 and Mexico in 2015. He's now retired from professional baseball.

Six years ago today, though, Galarraga was at the center of one of baseball's biggest controversies in recent memory.

On June 2, 2010, Galarraga was pitching for the Detroit Tigers and had retired the first 26 batters of the game. He was one out away from throwing a perfect game. Then this happened (video courtesy of MLB):

Oh, boy. Let's take a closer look:

Woof.

Galarraga was brutally robbed of the perfect game after first base umpire Jim Joyce missed the call and declared Cleveland's Jason Donald safe at first base.

Even Donald couldn't believe it:

Today, that call would have been reviewed and easily overturned, giving Galarraga his perfect game and sparing Joyce having to live with that footnote in his bio for the rest of his life.

But Major League Baseball didn't have its current replay system in 2010 -- only disputed home run calls were reviewable -- so there was no way for the umpires to go back and fix the mistake. All Joyce could do was sadly own up to the mistake after the game, saying:

It's only because of Galarraga's grace and compassion in the aftermath of the blown perfect game that Joyce was able to make some sort of peace with the mistake and move on (via SI):