All in all, perfect had a bad week.

But then again, maybe when it comes to marriage and baseball, 40 years and 26 outs is sometimes what you have to accept in an imperfect world.

Al and Tipper Gore, the publicly affectionate couple who spent years in the public eye without a whiff of marital scandal, announced last week that they were separating. The immediate reaction was: But they seemed to have the perfect marriage.

Even their joint statement struck a perfect tone, of a perfect couple parting ways, but amicably — and the few close friends who were quoted, mostly anonymously, insisted that was exactly the case. Will they have that ultimate oxymoron, the perfect divorce, as well?

Never mind that over the course of a 40-year marriage, surely nothing is perfect all the time, if ever. But I think the sadness and even shock that greeted their separation probably says as much about the observers as the observed.

Not to put an overly generous spin on something that involves a certain level of prurient curiosity, but I think other people's marriages interest us in a sort of funhouse mirror kind of way — as a reflection, if an entirely distorted one, of our own. So if a seemingly perfect marriage can end, what does that mean for one's own marriage?

Not that by itself this would lead to a separation, but surely perfection — or perceived perfection — presents a burden of its own. The funny thing is, though, I doubt Al and Tipper were the ones going around calling their marriage perfect. Maybe they've even had a little laugh over how their break-up was cast in some quarters as perfection shattered.

Despite what the T-shirts say, baseball isn't life — if only because in baseball, there actually is perfection, or at least the perfect game in which a pitcher gets every batter he faces out. Detroit's Armando Galarraga was almost the 21st pitcher in major league history to do that on Wednesday night, until the 27th batter, who should have been the last he faced, got on base in a totally blown call by umpire Jim Joyce.

I'm not sure how the atoms of the universe managed to align this way, but somehow, all sorts of noble behavior broke out.

Galarraga, who surely had cause to freak out a little, or even a lot, actually managed a weak smile after the blown call — although it probably was one of those placeholder expressions, something to do with your face while inside your head you're trying to sort out the shock of it all. Joyce, meanwhile, was stricken, realizing not just his mistake but also its terrible implications, admitting he blew it and apologizing profusely, and Galarraga accepted it and his unfair fate as an almost-but-not-perfect pitcher.

My initial reaction was that no apology, however heartfelt, is enough. Joyce needed to fall on his sword and resign over his unpardonable crime. But of course, such showy chest-beating is satisfying only momentarily, and ultimately an empty gesture — as opposed to going out the next day, and the day after that, and finding a way to do a better job.

I still think deep in my baseball fan's heart that Galarraga was robbed, and yet how amazing, and amazingly graceful, has it been to see him accept this and rise above the churning fray. It would be a shame if he became the poster boy for making the HD replay the new umpire.

Baseball's sainted record books come with all sorts of asterisks, and now it just has another one. Baseball, played as it is by humans, is filled with imperfections, and its glory comes not in ridding the game of them – a true impossibility – but in spite of them.

Which now makes me think that maybe those T-shirts do get it right, and baseball is indeed life or at least a whole lot like it.

Somehow, I think we'll all survive this imperfectly called perfect game, as well as the revelation that the perfect Gore marriage had its imperfections. It sure seems, at least, that Al and Tipper and Galarraga and Joyce will.