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A day after his blown call cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game, umpire Jim Joyce was the plate umpire for the Tigers day game on Thursday.

Let’s say Jim Joyce made the worst umpiring call in the history of baseball. Of course, Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was cheated of a perfect game, but he was cheated honestly, within the rules.

However, it must count, because imperfect umpires are as much a part of this sport as imperfect fielders who muff a pop fly or imperfect runners who neglect to touch a base.

Now baseball will do the prudent Bud Selig thing and study the possibility of more replay in the future. Review does clear up some mistakes in the National Football League and other sports, but baseball has its own innate acknowledgments of imperfection.

For now, there is no going back. The Tigers and Manager Jim Leyland acknowledged that before Thursday’s game with the Cleveland Indians by sending out Galarraga with the lineup card to hand to Joyce, an act of decency that should inform all fans.

Human imperfection has been implicit in this American game ever since the middle of the 19th century, when the official sat on the sideline and sometimes consulted fans if he was unsure of a call. That part is not coming back. Eventually, the umpire migrated onto the field, where he had to make calls as they happened.

Since the 1850s, this was the worst call, ever. But it stands because of baseball’s Rule 9.02(a), which says teams are not permitted to question judgment decisions. Mike Port, the vice president for umpiring for Major League Baseball, also noted Rule 9.02(c), which says, in part, “No umpire shall criticize, seek to reverse or interfere with another umpire’s decision unless asked to do so by the umpire making it.”

If Selig tried to overturn Joyce’s ghastly call, where would that lead? A commissioner sitting in the stands overturning a call in a World Series — or doing it the next day, when everybody is flying home?

Joyce, an experienced umpire, blatantly blew the call at first base Wednesday night, costing Galarraga the 27th straight out and a perfect game.

As soon as he saw the Tigers hopping around in anger, Joyce had to know he had fouled it up. Once he saw the replay, he apologized to the pitcher. What everybody must take from this mistake is that the umpire had the courage to apologize, and the pitcher had the grace to accept the subsequent one-hitter and the apology.

Not that they dare think of such a thing now, but Joyce and Galarraga are forever linked; they could even be the odd couple at memorabilia shows decades from now. On Thursday, General Motors gave Galarraga a new Chevrolet Corvette — not just for his pitching but also for his grace.

The question now is: What can be done in the near future to prevent anything this grotesque?

Upon seeing the reaction to his call, Joyce did not call a huddle of his colleagues and ask them to come up with an interpretation that would allow him to rectify the mistake.

On some plays, a home plate umpire can ask for help from his colleague at first or third base to see if the batter went too far with a checked swing. Sometimes one umpire has a different view of a play down the line. In this case, Joyce was not blocked from the play and nobody had a better view. But as Port pointed out, it was not an easy call to make at normal speed.

The other umpires were not about to rush over and say, See here, Jim, you blew it. By the time Joyce got the drift, it was probably too late to look for a subtle wink-wink from his colleagues. If they had found an excuse to huddle, they would have had a hard time justifying changing the call. In a 3-0 game, the opposing manager would have had every right to protest a reversal, no matter how bad Joyce’s first call was.

A lot of bad calls can never be reversed. Yogi Berra still leaps into the air when asked about Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in the 1955 World Series, but the record book says he was safe.

The home plate umpire Babe Pinelli called a borderline third strike on Dale Mitchell for the last out of Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Did Pinelli go with the emotion of the play? Maybe. One can only assume there was no psychological payoff for Joyce to make the call he did. He just blew it.

Sometimes a ruling can be challenged. George Brett regained a home run after a court upheld the league’s sense-of-the-game ruling in the pine-tar bat incident.

Baseball has already adapted electronic replay for home run calls. Baseball considers a run — or four runs — to be worth consulting a replay. What about a perfect game? Or a close play in a meaningless game?

I would hate to see umpires duck into the replay room under the stands. Baseball is too nuanced, and too intricate to turn over decisions to a machine. Besides, the umps are pretty darn good. It takes minutes to sort out home run calls; the games are too long already. Pro football allows limited protests of calls, but it eats up minutes. Want to sit around for five minutes during the 2014 Super Bowl in New Arctic Jersey?

The current Stanley Cup finals have had several reviews of goals, based on whether the puck crossed the goal line. Soccer is still avoiding replay on whether the ball crossed the goal line; Geoff Hurst’s controversial goalfor England in 1966 still counts.

I agree with the conservative Selig that umpires’ decisions are part of the game, but let’s face it: more electronic surveillance is coming — too late to save Armando Galarraga’s perfect game.

The saddest part about Mark McGwire's insistence that he was naturally "given the gift to hit home runs" — even as he copped Jan. 11 to a near decade's worth of steroid use — is that it might just be true. He did, after all, smash the single-season home-run record for rookies with 49 long balls in 1987 — two years before, he says now, he first tried doping. Could he have edged out Sammy Sosa to crush Roger Maris' 37-year-old home-run record in 1998 — knocking 70 balls out of the park — even without juicing? Fans will never know.

Physical performance enhancers have long been with us. The ancient Greeks popped sesame seeds and hallucinogenic mushrooms before athletics contests; Roman gladiators used stimulants to get an edge. Today's drug of choice, anabolic steroids — anabolic from the Greek verb meaning to put on or add — are synthetic compounds of such hormones as testosterone, known to build muscle and boost strength. Anabolic steroids cobble together simple materials from the gut and blood into more complex, living tissue, helping athletes bulk up — fast.

Scientists began looking for what we now know as testosterone as early as the 1840s, but research was hampered by pervasive skepticism that such a substance existed. In 1926 scientists finally first documented the existence of a male sex hormone in a bull's testicles, and by 1935 they had chemically synthesized testosterone.

Rumors persist that subsequent work on steroids occurred in Nazi Germany; doctors reportedly dosed troops with testosterone to give them an aggressive edge on the battlefield, and even Hitler himself was injected with steroids. But the science of that era is so shrouded in secrecy that it's Maryland physician — and gym rat — John Ziegler who is usually given credit for first creating anabolic steroids. After reportedly learning that Soviet weightlifters at the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna were getting a boost from testosterone, he returned home eager to give U.S. lifters a similar up. But Ziegler's early attempts at dosing left athletes complaining of illness and with little improvement in strength.

After refining his experiments, Ziegler hit upon the first anabolic steroid, known as methandrostenolone and marketed in 1958 by Ciba Pharmaceuticals as Dianabol. But there was already a dark side. Ziegler's test subjects quickly started abusing the drugs and developed such side effects as swollen prostates or shrunken testicles — an outcome that would prompt the doctor to condemn his own creation before his death in 1983. Nonetheless, by the early 1960s pharmaceutical companies had developed nearly a dozen rival steroids, which quickly gained popularity off-label with athletes. In 1976, the International Olympic Committee became the first sports group to ban steroids. 

Over the ensuing years, a rash of doping scandals in the sports world — from cycling to track and field — prompted authorities to crack down harder on drug use. But in many quarters, baseball was believed to be largely immune. In April 1988 the Los Angeles Times reported that America's pastime remained "essentially steroid-free." While Washington Post sportswriter Thomas Boswell would call Oakland slugger Jose Canseco "the most conspicuous example of a player who has made himself great with steroids" later that year, Canseco shrugged off the charge; he went on to be named American League MVP. (He would later admit to doping from as early as 1985, saying steroids in late-1980s and 1990s baseball were as common "as a cup of coffee.")

Steroids were added to baseball's banned-substance roster in 1991, but no testing was mandated. Fans and officials largely turned a blind eye, even as players' bodies swelled along with their achievements. In 1999, even after McGwire had copped to taking androstenedione — or "andro," an over-the-counter precursor to testosterone later banned by the FDA — Senator Edward Kennedy called the slugger and his rival Sosa the "home-run kings for working families in America." A year later, the suggestion in the New York Times that up to 40% of major league players had taken steroids was largely met with crickets.

Eventually, however, the critics started to gain ground. Baseball traditionalists charged that doping undercut the sport's most storied records. The medical community, meanwhile, pointed to serious side effects: male breast development, coronary heart disease, susceptibility to injury and the mood swings known as 'roid rage, among others. The rising number of teens emulating their idols by doping provided more cause for concern.

In 2002 the major league players and managers agreed to begin limited, anonymous testing for steroids. Two years later President George W. Bush took the unprecedented step of condemning steroids in his State of the Union address, saying the use of the "dangerous" drugs in baseball, among other sports, "sends the wrong message — that there are shortcuts to accomplishments, and that performance is more important than character." That same year, standards grew tougher and major leaguers submitted to their first mandatory steroid tests. Under the penalties first introduced for doping in 2005, 12 players were suspended for 10 days each.

Two years later, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell capped his 21-month investigation into steroids in baseball — begun at Commissioner Bud Selig's request — with the infamous Mitchell Report, which called out 89 major league players for allegedly using steroids.

Testing has since helped clean up the sport. But it still struggles to shrug off the stain of doping. "I wish I had never played during the steroid era," McGwire said in his confession. He may not be alone.

Mark McGwire finally came clean, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball's single-season home run record in 1998.

Mark McGwire finally admitted Monday what he couldn't tell a Congressional committee nearly five years ago: His home-run hitting exploits, including his stirring 1998 run to the single-season record, were fueled in part by steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

In a tearful 20-minute phone conversation with USA TODAY, McGwire said a desire to stay healthy and "get my body to feel normal" compelled him to use steroids in 1989 and 1990, and from 1993 to 1999.

McGwire said he often received steroids and human growth hormone from his younger brother Jay, a bodybuilder with whom McGwire says he has not been in contact with for eight years.

"I wish I had never taken steroids. It was foolish. I can't say enough how sorry I am," McGwire said, breaking down three times during his conversation with USA TODAY. "This is one of the toughest days of my life, so if I get emotional, bear with me. I have had to tell my son, my parents, my friends that I used steroids. It's been very hard. It's been very difficult."

McGwire's admission, made public with a statement sent to the Associated Press, comes five weeks before he will assume his duties as hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. Before coming clean publicly, he informed his family and made apologetic phone calls to Commissioner Bud Selig, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and Don Hooton, a Texas man who took up the anti-steroids fight after his son committed suicide after taking steroids.

He also contacted Pat Maris, widow of Roger Maris, whose 61 home runs hit in 1961 was the single-season record until McGwire hit his 62nd homer on Sept. 8, 1998.

That summer, the first murmurs of drug use sprouted when an Associated Press reporter spotted a bottle of androstenedione in McGwire's locker. Andro, as it's commonly known, is a steroid precursor that was legal at the time, but was banned by the International Olympic Committee.

McGwire had admitted taking it then. On Monday, he told USA TODAY it wasn't just andro: He resumed taking steroids in the second half of the '98 season to keep his body from wearing down.

McGwire often pointed at the Maris family in the box seats after hitting home runs that year, finally finishing with 70 home runs.

"She didn't want to believe it," McGwire said of his conversation Pat Maris. "I told her that I had to be honest. I told her I was so sorry for her, her family and Roger."

McGwire hit 583 home runs in his career, which ended after the 2001 season. But considerable doubt was cast on his accomplishments on March 17, 2005, when he famously told a congressional committee investigating steroids in baseball that "I'm not here to talk about the past."

Since then, he has been almost entirely out of the public eye, while his image took a public beating. He has appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot four times but has fallen far short of the required 75% required for induction.

But Monday's admission may bring relief to the game, if not redemption.

"I think that it's wonderful that he did this," said Hank Aaron, whose 755 home runs were the most in baseball history until Barry Bonds — indicted by a grand jury for allegedly lying about steroid use — broke the record in 2007. "It takes a big man to admit this and I want to commend him for that.

"He has asked for forgiveness. He has my forgiveness. If that's all that stands in the way between him being inducted into Cooperstown we should all forgive him. I'm extremely happy he came out with this. Now baseball goes on to another chapter."

Said Selig: "This statement of contrition, I believe, will make Mark's re-entry into the game much smoother and easier."

McGwire hit a rookie-record 49 home runs for the Oakland Athletics in 1987, but his career was wracked by injuries beginning in 1992. He played in just 74 games in 1993-94, but by 1996, was mostly healthy and hit 52 home runs in 130 games.

"I never suspected McGwire using steroids, and with the benefit of hindsight, I probably should have," says Sandy Alderson, general manager of the Oakland A's during that period. "That wasn't the case.'

"I'm glad he addressed this issue, and have begun to restore his reputation which suffered immeasurably over the last few years. He didn't lie to Congress, and given subsequent events, that distinguishes him from others from that panel.

"I'm glad he's confronted the past, now I look forward to him back in the game."