Wall Street and oil firms can learn from botched “perfect game”

Putting on his baseball cap once again, Sen. Harry Reid said today we all can learn lessons from last week's umpire-botched "perfect game,"  but no more so than insurance companies, Wall Street firms and oil conglomerates that have difficulty owning up to their mistakes.

In a Senate speech, Reid spoke admiringly of umpire Jim Joyce, whose blown call last Wednesday on the final out deprived Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga of what would have been only the 21st  perfect game in major league history.

"The umpire Jim Joyce admitted he was wrong," Reid said. "He apologized to the pitcher, the players and the fans he let down.

"He didn't make any excuses. The umpire didn't hire a PR firm or run television ads defending the indefensible, to try to spin his mistake. He just owned up to it."

For his part, Galarraga "graciously accepted the apology and moved on. He didn't raise his voice or point his finger," said Reid,

"The 28-year-old player had just summoned the strength to throw the game of his life, but then somehow summoned the grace not to throw the tantrum he was entitled to," said Reid. "It was an incredible act of class and compassion, and incredible display of perspective and sympathy."

"It was, appropriately enough, perfect," said Reid, a baseball fan (his boyhood team was the Indians) who just a few weeks ago took to the Senate floor to applaud the Mother's Day perfect game tossed by Oakland A's pitcher Dallas Braden.

There is a moral to what Jim Joyce did, Reid added.

"In recent days we have seen insurance companies try to avoid responsibility for denying health care to the sick," he said. "We have seen Wall Street executives try to avoid responsibility for millions of layoffs.  We have seen oil companies try to avoid responsibility for environmental disasters of historic proportions."

"We've seen too many fail to own up to their own mistakes and take responsibility for their own actions," Reid said. "More than that, we have seen too many actively try to run away when others try to hold them to account.

In that context, what Jim Joyce did was as exceptional as a perfect game itself."