A lot has been written about last Wednesday night’s almost perfect game pitched by Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga.   What stood out for me from that game was all the positive mediatude created for Galarraga, the Detroit Tigers and the city of Detroit.  Positive mediatude is few and far between for the struggling Motor City, but in one crazy, magnificent sports night, the pitcher, his team and his city were all shining bright.  A perfect corporate voice. 

How did it happen?  It was a by-product, really, from Arnando Galarraga’s corporate voice which abounded with good sportsmanship.  If we didn’t know what his corporate voice was before the game, we sure knew what it was during the last out and after the game.  The Detroit Free Press had various headlines over those couple of days reading, “Taking the High Road”, “Perfect Mistake”, and “Perfect gentlemen”.  National sports columnists wrote positive columns about Galarraga and the Tigers, and it even made the national television morning and evening news shows. 

A respected long-term umpire missed a call and took away a milestone from Galarrage, yet Galarrage didn’t scream and yell or embarrass himself; he just showed a slight smile of disbelief at first base after the safe call was made.  When he was asked about it after the game when he knew the umpire had missed the call, he said “I told him, ‘Nobody’s  perfect,'”.  “What am I going to say?” “He feels so bad”.  He feels so bad?  After a perfect game was taken away from him?  Perfect corporate voice.

Galarraga kept his cool.  He showed empathy for the umpire.  He shook hands with him the next day at home plate when he delivered the lineup card — a great public relations move by Tigers’ Manager Jim Leyland.  And all this not only got him positive media coverage and mediatude, but he created it for his team, the Tigers, and then it trickled upward to become part of the city of Detroit’s new “class act” image.  A perfect corporate voice.

So remember again how influential a corporate voice can be.  In this case, it worked positively, but it can also work the opposite and create negative coverage beyond you.  Study Armando Galarraga’s corporate voice and then look at your own and make a promise to yourself that you will continue to make it positive, maybe even almost perfect.