Umpire Jim Joyce saw it differently. He called the runner safe, ruining Galarraga’s bid to become only the 21st pitcher to retire 27 straight batters.

The crime was not Joyce’s call – an honest mistake on a bang-bang play that he quickly admitted and plainly regretted. These things happen. The culprit was baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s stubborn refusal to come to grips with that reality. Baseball allows use of replay only to determine if a home run is valid. So Joyce was stuck, and Galarraga was robbed.

Selig now says he’ll examine expanding instant replay. Again. Slowly. He should have acted last fall after several bad calls marred the playoffs. Instead, he fretted that “constant interruptions” for replays would hurt the game’s flow – as if frequent pitching changes and a lethargic pace don’t do that already.

Note to Bud: All that’s needed is a bit of creative problem solving. The NFL, for instance, allows coaches to challenge two calls per game. Better yet, baseball could just let the umps decide when to check their calls and make the new policy retroactive to Joyce’s ruling at first.

Beyond the replay, the almost perfect game offered what President Obama would call “a teachable moment.” This one was about sportsmanship, so often missing these days. Joyce, one of the game’s top umpires, quickly owned up to his mistake, lamenting “I just cost that kid a perfect game” and apologizing in person. (Attention, politicians: This is the way to admit you’re wrong.)

Tigers’ manager Jim Leyland urged fans to treat Joyce civilly at Thursday’s game. Galarraga showed class worthy of the Hall of Fame. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said of Joyce. “I understand.”

One TV pundit suggested that with a perfect game at stake, perhaps Joyce should have given Galarraga the benefit of the doubt. But that would only have opened the door to an equal blunder. The umpire’s mantra works just fine: Call ‘em as you see ‘em. If you’re not sure what you saw, though, it’s time to go to the videotape.

The closest the Rays got to a hit was Jason Bartlett’s liner to third leading off the game. Even Longoria tried to bunt against Braden leading off the fifth inning, drawing boos from the small crowd. “It’s without a doubt a team effort,” Braden said. “You got eight guys out there chasing balls and knocking balls down for me. So this is ours, not just mine.”

Before this gem, Braden was best known for his enraged reactions to Yankees star Alex Rodriguez walking across the mound back on April 22, when he beat Yankees ace CC Sabathia. He screamed at A-Rod after the incident and was still angry after the game, advising the slugger “to go do laps in the bullpen” if he wanted to run across the mound.

Rodriguez struck a far more conciliatory tone Sunday. “I’ve learned in my career that it’s always better to be remembered for some of the good things you do on the field and good for him,” Rodriguez said. “Braden threw a perfect game. And, even better, he beat the Rays.”

It was the majors’ first perfect game since Mark Buehrle did it for the White Sox against the Rays on July 23, and the second no-hitter this season after Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez pulled it off in Atlanta on April 17. The A’s last no-hitter was thrown by Dave Stewart on June 29, 1990, at Toronto.

Braden wasn’t fazed by anything, throwing two-strike changeups and getting quick outs against a Rays team that lost for just the third time this year. He struck out six in the 109-pitch performance, throwing 77 strikes in his 53rd career start and first complete game. Braden’s teammates mobbed him when the Mother’s Day masterpiece was over, leaving bats and gloves scattered on the field. The left-hander pointed to the sky in honor of his mom, Jodie Atwood, who died of cancer when he was a high school senior. He shared a long and tearful hug with his grandma, Peggy Lindsey, the woman who raised him, in front of the dugout.

“It hasn’t been a joyous day for me in a while,” Braden said. “With my Grandma in the stands it makes it a lot better.” Braden’s perfect game was the sixth no-hitter in Oakland history. The 26-year-old Braden, a native of nearby Stockton, was a 24th –round draft pick by the A’s in 2004. Last Mother’s Day, Braden was hit by a line drive by Vernon Wells.

“You know, a year later you don’t expect anything like this,” he said. “I’m just happy to be putting on a uniform a year later.” The A’s defense didn’t even have to make a really tough play in fair territory. Third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff sprinted to the dirt in front of Oakland’s dugout to catch a foul popup by Dioner Navarro for the second out in the sixth. Kapler then fouled out on a 12-pitch at-bat on another ball caught by Kouzmanoff. Navarro fouled off five straight pitches before the popup.

Landon Powell caught the game with regular catcher Kurt Suzuki injured. Kouzmanoff and Ryan Sweeney each singled in runs for the A’s, who added two unearned runs in the fourth after catcher Navarro’s throwing error. Daric Barton had three hits and scored twice for Oakland.

James Shields failed to beat the A’s for the second time in 12 days after striking out 12 in a 10-3 win April 28.

Throwing from a smooth, seemingly effortless motion through 19 major league seasons, Roberts displayed an outstanding fastball and extraordinary control and stamina. Long before pitch counts, set-up men and closers, he usually finished what he started. The right-hander was the most productive pitcher in the NL in the first half of the 1950s. Roberts won 286 games and had six consecutive 20-win seasons. He played in an era when pitchers expected to go the distance. The past 25 years, Phillies pitchers threw a total of 300 complete games – five fewer than Roberts by himself. Robin made 609 career starts, finishing more than half.

“Robin was one the most consistent, competitive and durable pitchers in his generation and a symbol of the Whiz Kids,” said Commissioner Bud Selig. “He truly loved baseball and always had its best interests at heart.”

Long after his career ended, Roberts followed the Phillies closely and was popular in Philadelphia, drawing boisterous applause from fans each time he came back. A statue of him outside the first-base gate at Citizens Bank Park was adorned with a wreath Thursday, and his No. 36 jersey, which the team retired in 1962, was hung in the dugout before Thursday’s game, and will remain in their dugout for both home and away games all season. Players will wear No. 36 on their sleeves.

Robin Evan Roberts was born September 30, 1926, in Springfield, Illinois, a son of Welsh immigrants. His parents, Tom and Sarah, had moved to central Illinois from Wales in 1921. His father was a coal miner and Roberts grew up listening to Cubs games on the radio.

Roberts played baseball, basketball and football at Lanphier High School in Springfield before going to Michigan State, where he starred in basketball and baseball. During the summers of 1946 and 1947, Roberts pitched in the semi-professional Northern League for Montpeliar, Vermont. He signed with the Phillies for $25,000 following his college graduation in 1947. He pitched for half a season in the minors, and then made his debut for Philadelphia in June 1948.

Roberts became a star in 1950 when the Phillies, a lackluster franchise for decades, put together a young ball club known as the Whiz Kids. Roberts’s victory in the pennant clincher brought his record to 20-11, and he became the first Phillies’ pitcher to win 20 games since Grover Cleveland Alexander won 30 in 1917.

Roberts was beaten by the Yankees’ Allie Reynolds, 2-1, in Game 2 of the World Series, yielding a 10th-inning home run to Joe DiMaggio at Shibe Park, and the Yankees went on to a four-game sweep.

Roberts’s best season was 1952, when he was 28-7 for a fourth-place team and completed 30 of his 37 starts. His rising fastball almost always found a corner of the plate. Pitching at least 300 innings in each of his six straight 20-victory seasons, Roberts never walked more than 77 batters in any of those years. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.

But his remarkable control and his reluctance to brush back hitters came at a cost. He yielded 46 homers in 1956, a major league record at the time, and the 505 homers he gave up in his career are still a record. “I had a high fastball and I either overpowered them or they overpowered me,” said Roberts.

Later, Roberts pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, the Houston Astros and the Chicago Cubs. He ended his major league career after the 1966 season with a record of 286-245, an earned run average of 3.41, and 305 complete games. He pitched 45 shutouts and struck out 2,357 batters.

Roberts was active in the formation of the baseball players’ union, having been instrumental in the hiring of Marvin Miller as the first executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966.

After leaving the major leagues, Roberts was an investment executive, a baseball coach for the University of South Florida in Tampa and a minor league instructor for the Phillies.

Roberts is survived by his sons Robin Jr., of Blue Bell, Pa.; Dan and Jimmy, both of Temple Terrace; and Rick, of Athens, Ga.; a brother, John, of Springfield, IL; seven grandchildren and a great-grandson. His wife, Mary, died in 2005.

Prince Harry was wearing a blue Mets cap and a white T-shirt with “walking with the wounded” written on the front in red lettering. The Mets had made him a pinstriped jersey with “Wales” and the number 22 on the back. He sheepishly waved to the crowd as he stood on the top of the mound. He then shook his right arm several times and did a full body jiggle to loosen up. He then made a hard, accurate throw that was a little high, forcing catcher Rod Barajas to stand from his crouch to make the catch of the pitch that crossed the plate.

For a polo player, the prince has a regal pitching arm. The redheaded royal looked nervous before throwing out the first ball. But after the announcer said, “Prince Harry, it’s your pitch!” his Royal Highness loosened his shoulders and threw the ball solidly into the catcher’s glove.

Barajas shook the prince’s hand and a grinning Harry mugged wiping sweat from his brow before stepping into the Mets dugout to chat with the players. Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey had given Harry throwing advice about a half-hour before the game.

A lieutenant in the British Army, Harry spent several innings in a luxury suite with Mets owner Fred Wilpon, the founder of Welcome Back Veterans, a charity which provides support and treatment for soldiers with post traumatic stress disorders. Earlier Saturday, Harry toured a UNICEF operations center.

Harry arrived Friday for a three-day visit to promote fellowship between British and U.S. war veterans. The 25-year-old prince, who served in Afghanistan, walked with wounded veterans in Central Park on Sunday morning.

The prince, the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales, and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, began his three-day visit Friday at West Point to look for ways British and U.S. veterans charities can work together to support wounded troops returning home.

Set in Newark in 1957, the 80-page story is told to “Mr. King” decades later by the Titans’ third base coach and describes Billy’s call-up from a minor league team in Iowa, his one month as a hitting and catching sensation and his inevitable downfall.

King is among a group of novelists who have dipped into writing about baseball. Ring Lardner, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Park Harris did it. So did Robert Coover, Don DeLillo (in the prologue to his novel “Underworld”), Douglass Wallop, Eric Rolfe Greenberg, W.P. Kinsella and George Plimpton.

King has written about baseball before. A devout Boston Red Sox fan, he co-authored a book about Boston’s 2004 World Series victory. He also wrote about a Little League team for The New Yorker. Another of King’s books, “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,” was not a baseball novel but used the former Red Sox pitcher as an inspiration to a girl lost in the woods. Before his great renown, King wrote “Brooklyn August,” a poem about a night game at Ebbets Field that starred Gil Hodges, Carl Erskine and Roy Campanella.

“My mother worked in the Stratford (Conn.) laundry on the mangler,” King wrote in an e-mail message. “Most of the crew was African-American, and they all rooted for the Dodgers. My mom became a Dodger fan, too, and even went – on a bus trip – with the other ‘girls’ (her word) to see the Bums play at Ebbets.”

King spent two weeks writing “Blockade Billy” and a third week polishing it. With its Norman Rockwell-like cover illustration, “Blockade Billy” first appeared in April in an edition from Cemetery Dance Publications; it was packaged by Scribner last month with a story published last July in Esquire.

King is not steeped in baseball fiction. He read Malamud’s “The Natural,” the basis for the Robert Redford film, and Wallop’s “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant,” the basis for the Broadway musical “Damn Yankees.” But most of his reading in the genre has been novels for youngsters by John R. Tunis and Jackson Scholz.

“Baseball fiction is hard,” he wrote in the e-mail message. “There’s 25 guys on a major league squad!”

Although King is a fan of Roth, he has not read “The Great American Novel,” a wild, richly detailed 1973 satire about a third major league whose history is erased from the annals – as Blockade Billy’s inevitably will be.

King’s agent, Chuck Verrill, said that King’s fans were well aware of his love for baseball; readers of his “Dark Tower” series know that in one of the books, a character asks if the Red Sox have won the World Series. “This idea finally compelled him to write the story,’ he said, referring to Newark baseball in 1957. “He loved that period of time and the quality of the baseball.”

Coover did not wait until he was in his 60s to write a baseball novel, as King did, or write about baseball realistically. Coover drew on the tabletop ball games he created as a child in the Midwest in the 1940s to write “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.” Waugh is a middle-aged man obsessively absorbed in his imaginary league, which he runs with rolls of his dice and accessories like his Extraordinary Occurrence Chart.

“I imitated calling the plays as Harry Caray did and kept records, saw players through their up-and-down playing careers,” said Coover. “I not only remembered all those ‘players,’” added Coover, who years later, in his 30s, rediscovered his league records while cleaning out boxes in his parents’ house. “I even knew what they ‘looked’ like, whether they were left- or right-handed, defensive greats or big hitters, cool or given to tantrums.”

Coover did more than write a great novel that created a parallel baseball universe, but in Waugh, he created a fantasy baseball pioneer.

Great baseball fiction is not as plentiful as the best historical, biographical and journalistic work of Roger Angell, John Updike, Gay Talese, Roger Kahn, David Halberstam, Red Smith, Lawrence Ritter and Jane Leavy.

“You take Roger Angell on baseball before you take any novelist because it’s somehow a celebration of what’s going on,” said Nicholas Dawidoff, who wrote “The Catcher Was a Spy,” about Moe Berg. “Being a novelist, there’s an inherent gesture of making things up.” “Blockade Billy” is, of course, made up, although King lets him mingle with Ted Williams, Jimmy Piersall, Clete Boyer and Luis Aparicio.

But Billy’s darkness is not as frightening as many of King’s characters. “At least Steve avoided turning him into a vampire,” Verrill said.