I think it was a summer afternoon or was it winter? Who knows? Who cares? We were 20 games plus into the 2007 strat-o-matic baseball season so there was no reason to go outside anyway, but maybe I should have.
Dontrelle Willis of the Octopus Kings threw a no hitter against my Over The Fencers. I thought about offering congratulations, but was too pissed off so I rolled the dice one more time and said to my friend, “big deal! it wasn’t a perfect game. throw me a beer.”
There’s been other no hitters in Strat-o-matic time. I witnessed two others on TV, but never a perfect game, never 27 up and 27 down without a base runner. On Tuesday night, Homer Bailey was perfect through six innings, but it didn’t last. It seldom does. He walked Gregor Blanco to lead off the seventh inning and had to settle for just another no hitter.
Thanks to Bailey and Joey Votto’s defense, there’s now been 280 no hitters since 1901, but only 21 perfect games out of something like 350,000 games. It takes some impossible balance of perfect wind, moon, tides, humidity, umpires, great defense and oh yeh, a pitcher with pinpoint control.
There’s been at least one perfect game in every month baseball is played including Don Larson’s 1956 October World Series game. The merry month of May has the most with seven. August had to wait until last season’s King Felix. That was one of three in the same 2012 season-the most ever.
Kenny Rogers threw one on July 28, 1994 three years to the day after Dennis Martinez did the same against the Dodgers. That makes July 28th the only day in which two perfect games have been thrown. It’s also Marty Brenneman’s birthday.
Maybe Mark Buehrle’s in 2009 was the most spectacular because of what happened in the 9th inning. Dewayn Wise’s catch almost silenced White Sox’s announcer Ken Harrelson, but mercy! the hawk returned and perfection happened two outs later.
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