Topic: MLB

In 1999, Major League Baseball and its umpires came to the brink of labor armageddon, with the vast majority of the game's veteran umpires threatening to retire en masse as the season came down the stretch. A decade and change later, it's all a distant memory—and both sides seem, belatedly and improbably, to have gotten what they wanted.

On Saturday afternoon, Philip Humber won his 12th game as a Major Leaguer by throwing the 21st perfect game in baseball history. It was strange and beautiful and incredibly, hilariously random—and, actually, very nearly as perfect as "perfect game" suggests.

As a commissioner, Bud Selig makes a pretty great owner. The seemingly inevitable expansion of the MLB Playoffs is just another example of Selig Doing Selig, for all the usual reasons.

The Baseball Hall of Fame will announce the members of its 2012 class on January 9. If all goes according to plan, one or a few inductees will get phone calls from some suit in Cooperstown and they will cry. Then word will be leaked our way. We will sing the praises of the chosen, pour one out for Edgar Martínez, and begin anew the cycle of arguing about what greatness is, how you measure it, and how you deal with the fact that sometimes greatness is built on a foundation of bullshit.