In the meantime, the handful of people who cared about such milestones scrambled to make sure Reyes was indeed the culprit. Sean Forman, the proprietor of Baseball-Reference.com – which has tracked the march to half-a-million dutifully – had written a program to inform him when an error showed up on a scoreboard page. At 9:19 p.m. ET, two errors pinged: one from the Marlins and another from the San Francisco Giants, committed by shortstop Joaquin Arias. According to the program, Arias was the owner of No. 500,000.

Turns out computers make errors, too.

Data from MLB's PITCHf/x system showed the pitch on Arias' error was thrown at 9:17:33, while Reyes' came at 9:18:17. Marlins starter Mark Buehrle, who works faster than anyone in the game, was 44 seconds too slow.

In the meantime, the handful of people who cared about such milestones scrambled to make sure Reyes was indeed the culprit. Sean Forman, the proprietor of Baseball-Reference.com – which has tracked the march to half-a-million dutifully – had written a program to inform him when an error showed up on a scoreboard page. At 9:19 p.m. ET, two errors pinged: one from the Marlins and another from the San Francisco Giants, committed by shortstop Joaquin Arias. According to the program, Arias was the owner of No. 500,000.

.