During my drive to Chicago tonight (for a Tim Miller second series workshop at Yogaview – woo-hoo!), I was getting all upset again over the perfect game that was stolen from Armando Galarraga. True Detroit Tigers fan will wonder, “you mean you stopped getting upset since last night?” Well, not really. But work was such madness today that I didn’t have time to think about Jim Joyce’s tragic call. And  then after work, I took a much-needed Ashtanga class with Misty, and didn’t think about baseball then.

But on this drive, the rage started stirring again. I realized that Galarraga has to be the most yogic figure in baseball. He has to be. Who else could have had a perfect game stolen from him and then merely smiled and prepped his next pitch?

First, the game: for Galarraga to have pitched the perfect game (and he did, no matter what the official baseball records say), he needed to still his mind (yoga is defined as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind) and to maintain dharana — single-pointed focus — which is one of the eight limbs of yoga.

How he handled the blown call blew me away. A true Zen master.

Unbelievable that a man could have that much acceptance and detachment from the outcome of the situation. Simply unbelievable.

Santa Monica-based yoga instructor (and former ashtangi) Bryan Kest says that calmness is a muscle. I love that concept. I tend to be a very reactive person. Something happens, I immediately assume the worst — or at least I am running down five other scenarios that will play out because of this event. But in the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali tells us that pain that has not yet come is avoidable. In other words, not overreact.

I am getting less reactive over time, but only because of my near-daily yoga practice and the powerfully calming effects of a colleague of mine (a man who has had more of an influence on me than he will ever know). This colleague fought in the Vietnam War, and that gives him, as you can imagine, a different perspective on life. All the stuff we fret over and sweat — does it really matter?

What does really matter?

Well, in the same position, could I have reacted the way Galaragga did? “Hell no!” would be my immediate response. But there I am, reacting again. If you had asked me this question even two years ago, I would have said no way — my character is so different than his, and I could never display that kind of mettle in that situation (not to mention I’ve never played catch once in my life).

But now that I am trying to live my life along a yogic path, I won’t say never. I still say it’s 99.9 percent unlikely that I would not be breathing fire in that situation. But I do see how it’s possible — how yoga refines our character, enhancing the qualities we want more of and whittling down the qualities we want less of. The process is often a long one — and it’s not linear. Two steps forward, three steps back. But the important thing is that progress is happening, and each time we meet with resistance or challenge, we have the opportunity to be less reactive and more yogic than we were last time.

So Armando: whether or not you practice yoga, thank you for showing us the yogic way.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, on the other hand — here’s the man who could have righted a wrong. But I’m not going to go there — because that would not be yogic.