He was safe! Or was he?

Thinking back to last season, there is only one play that still stands out among baseball fans across America as controversial. The final play of the Tigers, Indians match up on June 2 leaving Armando Galarraga with an almost perfect game, keeping him out of the record books.

The botched call on what would have been the 27th out of the game offers the strongest possible evidence for proponents of expanding the role of instant replay in baseball. Is there anyone who wouldn't have wanted to see Galaragga make his mark on history, and make that season which in the first two months had already featured two perfect games and a no-hitter that much more special?

Video: www.mlb.com

What's more, Jim Joyce, who has been a distinguished umpire for Major League Baseball since 1986 will always be remembered for this one blown call. After watching the post-game agony on Joyce's face, why deny the next erring umpire the chance to watch the play over on a monitor and make the whole thing right?

This is not the first time a lack of technology has potentially changed the course of history, in the ninth inning of game six of the 1985 World Series, first-base umpire, Don Denkinger, called Jorge Orta of the Kansas City Royals safe at first base. Replays later showed that St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, Todd Worrell had touched the bag, before Orta got there. This play inevitably sent the Cardinals into a downward spiral in which they lost the series in game seven.

All of this considered, there is a reason that the only real comparable mistake was Don Denkinger's missed call from back in 1985 -- blown calls of this proportion are few and far between. The proposed system of replay would feature something of a football style format where managers would get one to two challenges per game. Not only would this affect every game throughout the regular season but it would lead to overturning minor bad calls, which quite frankly make the game more entertaining. It doesn't seem worth it to change an entire system for the chance of a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Sure, not having replay took away Galaragga's perfect game and probably should have been corrected by Major League Baseball but the thing about our national past time is that baseball is filled with a history of bad calls. They are a part of the triumphs and shortfalls that parents tell their kids about; no one will ever tell a story about how their favorite player got a botched call overturned to win a perfect game.

The issue of replay is something that will be discussed around baseball for years to come, but the fact remains...sometimes the best part of going to a baseball game is yelling an expletive out two at the top of your lungs at an umpire and talking about it with fellow fans for days to come.