Perfection
Posted: May 9th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 71 Comments »
Maybe the most important thing to know about our perfect game pitcher Dallas Braden is this: He was never a prospect. Not ever.
He was the 1,383rd player taken after he graduated from Alonzo Stagg High in Stockton, Calif. He just showed up at American River College in Sacramento — the American River coach, Kevin Higgins, has said in interviews that he had never heard of Braden — and he played well enough there to get a chance to play for Texas Tech. He pitched well enough at Texas Tech — had a 4.56 ERA for the season, but had a couple of big wins — that he was drafted in the 24th round by Oakland. Teams tend not to think all that much about guys they take in the 24th round; it’s a good bet that Braden was drafted because he threw a screwball. Hey, nobody throws a screwball anymore.
Braden was never a prospect in the minor leagues either. Even in 2005, when he won 15 games in the minors and was named the team’s organizational player of the year, he was still ranked as the 19th best Oakland A’s prospect by Baseball America. The scouting report was build around the idea that he did not have a good-enough fastball or slider. The next year, he was not ranked among the A’s 30 best prospects. In 2007, when he was called up to pitch when Rich Harden got hurt, he was certain it was a prank.
No, he was never highly regarded. He was not regarded at all. He was a left-handed pitcher with a Member’s Only fastball — mid-80s — a bland slider and this one sleigh-of-hand pitch that would disappear into hitters’ blind spots. Or anyway, it disappeared into MINOR LEAGUE HITTERS’ blind spots … that first year in the big leagues, the league hit .303 against him, and after he won his first big league decision he lost his next eight. It was more or less a consensus that he wasn’t getting big league hitters out with that stuff.
Braden did have something else, though. He had this bold certainty that he belonged. Who knows where that sort of confidence comes from? Braden’s childhood has been written about before — it wasn’t easy. He lost his mother when he was a senior in high school. For a while, he lived in the hotel his grandmother Peggy managed. In this fascinating story, his college coach told Susan Slusser that he would sometimes find Braden in the parking lot, sleeping in his truck. Braden himself has said that without his grandmother’s influence, he undoubtedly would have ended up in jail. He had 209 — the area code of his hometown Stockton — tattooed across his chest so he would never forget where he came from. It wasn’t necessary. He never could forget.
And yet, there was this boldness about him, this conviction that overpowered the way other people viewed his talent. These are the players that fascinate me most — the ones who deeply believe that they’re going to make it even when all available evidence suggests that they probably will not.
All of this leads to this season, which is rapidly becoming the season of Dallas Braden.
* * *
First — he publicly challenged Alex Rodriguez, who ran across the mound during a game Braden was pitching. People had different views about how egregious the run-across really was — some think it’s an obvious baseball blasphemy, others never heard of the rule — but in the end the larger point probably had nothing to do with A-Rod at all. The larger point was probably about a 26-year-old pitcher with limited Major League success calling out the highest-paid player in baseball for daring to tread on his mound. That’s what he called it. HIS MOUND. Some people mocked it — Derek Jeter said “It’s not like he brought it from home” — and some people respected it, but nobody could ignore it. Yes, Alex Rodriguez had more postseason extra-base hits than Braden had career victories. Yes, Alex Rodriguez had made about 250 million more dollars than Braden in salary. But the kid was not backing down.
Second — well, that happened Sunday in Oakland. There was no reason to expect much excitement on this Mother’s Day. The A’s were playing the Rays — the second-highest scoring offense in the league. Braden had been OK all year but nothing more — less than two weeks earlier the Rays had knocked him out of the game with nobody out in the fifth inning. There was no promotion going — it wasn’t even a free parking day in Oakland. Only 12,228 showed up — a bunch of them sitting in section 209 in honor of Stockton. Braden breezed through Rays in the first on nine pitches. The fastest of those pitches was 88 mph — and it was a ball.
A screwball, as you probably know, is a pitch thrown that breaks the opposite way of a curveball. So, when a lefty throws it, it breaks AWAY from a right-handed hitter. That pitch Braden throws that breaks away from righties is now widely viewed by pitching experts as a change-up and not a screwball — not that it really matters what it’s called. It is always interesting how pitches change names. There was, according to Rob Neyer, a pitch in the late 1800s called a fadeaway that some people think became the “screwball” and others think became the circle-change-up. Nobody knows for sure. Either way it seems that Dallas Braden in 2010 throws the ol’ fadeaway.
* * *
Braden had a slightly tougher time in the second — he stuck mostly with hard stuff, or anyway the hardest stuff he could manage. At the end of a six-pitch battle, he challenged Evan Longoria with an 89-mph fastball — that’s Braden’s speed limit — and got him to fly out. He worked sliders against Carlos Pena and got him to pull the third one to first. He struck out B.J. Upton looking on a high inside fastball that Upton seemed to think was too high and too far inside.
To pitch like this — with an uncertain fastball and an out-pitch that goes Little League slow — takes command, and it takes precision, and perhaps most of all it takes brashness. Jamie Moyer — the master of the change-up — once said something like this: The key to throwing a great change-up is conviction. I think he meant that you have to throw your change-up with 100% belief that it will get the hitter out. That’s not the easiest thing to do. Hitters have done terrible things to misguided change-ups.
By the fifth inning, people began to realize something was happening. Braden struck out Longoria on the fadeaway, got Pena to punch a pretty easy fly ball to left field, induced Upton to beat a ground ball to third. That was 15 outs in a row. The sixth inning was a thing of beauty. He struck out Willy Aybar on the fadeaway — Aybar could not lay-off though the ball probably was six inches off the plate. He got Dioner Navarro to hit a ball into foul ground on a high inside fastball at 85 mph. And he and Gabe Kapler battled through an epic 12-pitch at-bat — Kapler hits seven foul balls out of reach, which isn’t easy to do in Oakland where there is enough foul ground to build a shopping mall. The eighth foul ball stayed in play, and Oakland’s Kevin Kouzmanoff caught it for the third out.
* * *
Baseball is the only sport that offers precisely this sort of drama — no other sport offers perfection as an option. Well, there’s bowling. But among the team sports — you really can’t have a perfect game in football. High scoring basketball games can stop the nation, but nobody is ever scoring 100 points again. Shutouts in hockey are not uncommon, and in soccer even less uncommon.
Only baseball, with its precisely scorekeeping and thorough record keeping, offers a real shot at perfection. There had been 18 perfect games thrown in baseball history, though for some reason these always include two thrown in 1880 (five days apart, no less) when it took eight balls to walk somebody, the mound was 50 feet from home plate and pitchers were still supposed to throw underhand. Completely different game then … but baseball does cherish its past.
The first modern National League perfect game didn’t happen until 1964 — that was Jim Bunning. By then there had been a few American League perfect games, the most prominent being Don Larsen’s World Series perfect game in 1956. After Bunning, Sandy Koufax threw one in 1965 and Catfish Hunter threw one in 1968. There were none in the 1970s, but four more perfect games from 1981-91. Well, perfect games — like Triple Crown horses — tend to come in bunches.
Last year, of course, Mark Buehrle threw a perfect game — and it’s stunning how similar Buehrle is to Braden. Buehrle was a 38th round draft choice. He could throw his fastball into the low 90s, but rarely did. He won with his change-up and with certainty. That day, the White Sox also made some great defensive plays.
The thing is … if you had to bet on someone throwing a perfect game in today’s era, you might think to bet on somebody with a 98-mph fastball and mean streak to go with it. But you would probably bet wrong. Since 1994 — going into Sunday — there had five perfect games. And four of them were thrown by what you might call, yes, crafty left-handers. Kenny Rogers threw one in 1994. His craftiness cousin David Wells threw one in 1998. Randy Johnson was, of course, a power pitcher, but by 2004 when he threw his perfect game he was 40 years old and as much guile as grit. And then there was Buehrle.
And THEN there was Braden. He made it through the seventh inning with seven pitches. The eighth was his obvious challenge — he had to face the middle of that Rays lineup again. He got Longoria to fly out on the fadeaway. Carlos Pena hit a foul-pop up on a high slider and Kouzmanoff made a dazzling catch as he ran into the third-base dugout. B.J. Upton struck out on an inside fastball, 90 mph, the fastest pitch Braden would throw all night. He was pumped.
The ninth went smoothly too. There really was no drama in this thing, no dazzling plays, no near-hits. Navarro did smack a line drive to left, but the ball hung up and was a pretty easy play for left-fielder Eric Patterson. Kapler worked for a 3-1 count and then grounded to short to end the perfect game. Braden pointed to the sky, to his mother. He was mobbed by his teammates. He then went into foul ground and hugged his grandmother for a long time. The same grandmother who had kept him from jail. The same grandmother who would laugh and tell the media “Stick it, A-Rod.” Yes, baseball fans will always remember the Mother’s Day Perfect Game.
It’s hard to remember anyone crashing into America’s sports consciousness quite like Braden — FIRST gaining some brand of fame for talking, and THEN backing up his talk in the most dramatic way. Athletes say all the time, “Nobody believed in me.” Usually they are just talking — usually there were plenty of people who believed. But, in this case, it’s true, few did believe in Dallas Braden. He somehow kept believing in himself.
“There’s nothing you can say,” Braden said in his television interview immediately after he became famous forever. “It’s perfect.”
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That’s good stuff right there. I’m happy for the guy and he’s right that nobody believed in him. When I first saw the headline I was sure it was a practical joke.
Will he really be famous forever?
Circle me, El Presidente
I logged onto my computer about 30 minutes ago, not knowing that Dallas Braden pitched a perfect game today. I’ve been glued to the screen reading about it from every perspective ever since, and this account has been by far, the best, thanks Joe!
Joe – I was thinking about you today, sitting in the stands in about the third inning, and your blog entry about the possibility and anticipation every game you attend being no-no (or perfect game) until the moment it gets broken up. Was such an amazing game to witness and can’t believe I got to see a perfect game in my lifetime, and I’m sure it’ll never happen again.
Same as Ryan, just logging on, saw the link on Joe’s twitter. Solid write-up, good guy, great game.
As I was once a soft-tossing little league lefty, I am kicking myself for giving up on the game in my teens. I coulda been perfect.
Perfection in tennis=golden set (not losing a point in a set) i think it’s been done once.
I love this story just so Braden can rub it in A-rod’s face…
been hoping for Joe’s write up and this is great. thanks, Joe and congrats to Braden.
Mother’s Day Perfect Game. Joe even named this one.
[...] the definitive piece on Dallas Braden’s perfect game on Sunday. As Joe reminds everyone, the odds of Braden ever making it to the majors were slim enough, let alone the chance he could ever pitch [...]
I’m a single father. My kids lost their mother 2 years ago when they were 9 and 11 years old, and today I had my son, who is quite good for his little league team and now 13, read the box score and the press recaps and hear about Braden’s life and how he lost his mother, too, and how he never quit even tho it was never easy.
And then, tonight, when my daughter, who is now 11, couldn’t sleep–after I made her some tea and sang a few silly songs (and consoled her by pointing out that my team, the Blackhawks, lost [she always roots against my teams, which is easier when the Cubs are playing]), after I had done all I could do and she still wasn’t able to sleep; well, I told her about Braden’s game (she played baseball for 2 years, too, but quit this past summer), and about his mom not being there either, and about how he had someone else–not his dad but his grandma–, and I think she felt a little less alone, and soon she was sleeping. It could have been the chamomile tea.
But I don’t think so. I say all this because I think that Dallas Braden’s day was somehow our day, too. He helped my kids deal with a very difficult trauma, and showed me again why I love this game and its players. I guess he helped me, too. In a small way, his game was our game.
~Carter
And Bunning’s perfect game was on Father’s Day.
[...] the definitive piece on Dallas Braden’s perfect game on Sunday. As Joe reminds everyone, the odds of Braden ever making it to the majors were slim enough, let alone the chance he could ever pitch [...]
Although he was never a big prospect, there was one guy who’s been singing his praises for a long time…Billy Beane. This is from July 2005.
Blez: Who is currently in the A’s minor league system that A’s fans should pay attention to that they may not be all that familiar with? You mentioned Dallas Braden.
Beane: Braden is a great one. That was one I was going to go back to. Dallas was someone we drafted in the 15th or so round and he’s only 21-years-old and he’s already at Double-A. He won again last night. He’s a low-round pick who is just flying through the system…To be that young and already pitching at Double-A is a pretty rapid rise AND he’s pitching well there.
Also, Braden had to ditch the screwball a few years ago because it gave him arm trouble. The change he throws now is completely different from the screwball that he was known for coming up.
The perfect games of Richmond and Ward are counted along with the others because both Richmond and Ward threw nine innings and did not allow a baserunner. Sure, the rules were different. Some made a perfect game easier–8 balls to walk a guy (it was nine when the NL got in business in 1876, reduced by stages to 4), the pitcher 50 feet away, hit batsmen did not go to first, and a foul could be caught for an out on the first bounce (Richmond’s catcher got five outs this way). But others made a perfecto harder (pitchers threw from flat ground instead of a mound, batters could request high or low balls, fielders caught the ball with their bare hands or little mittens). I think the fact that perfect games weren’t significantly more frequent back then–only two from 1876 until 1893, when the rules were modernized–argues pretty strongly that the games of Richmond and Ward were in fact unique feats that deserve to be mentioned with the rest.
So, how about that Dallas Braden? Charley Robertson still retains the Unlikeliest Perfect Game trophy but Braden can’t be far behind. Nice work from a guy with a career 93 ERA+ in 317 innings before today.
Here’s something that’s very cool: the scorecard for Lee Richmond’s perfect game, June 12, 1880.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lee-richmond-perfect-game-scorecard-2.jpeg
Yes, that is a 9-3 putout leading off the fifth (noted as R-A, with R=rf and A=1b).
I interviewed Braden years ago for a short prospect write up. One thing he said that somehow ended up on the cutting room floor was that the way he approached every at-bat was as if the hitter was out there trying to literally take the food off his table.
Perhaps I excluded because I thought it was the kind of brash thing someone might say who isn’t used to being interviewed, or who simply talks a big game. Watching him in the years since, I realize how appropriate that quote was, especially coming from a man who obviously knows what it is to be hungry. He pitches with a fantastic mixture of desperation and confidence. I imagine the French have a word for it.
As an Oakland fan since I was born, it was just amazing to watch Braden today. He was simply dominant. I mean, the defense didn’t even have to make any spectacular plays. He was just that good today.
We’ve thought highly of Braden here in the Bay Area (wait, let me qualify…the 3 or 4 of us who are A’s fans) for a while. He was very good last year before he got hurt…and has kept right on ticking this year. To see him get this after a career of hard work and determination to make it is just spectacular!
I have to said :
That is Girardi’s approach.
Derek have to do that ….
If he didn’t said something liked that, things will turn to him .
Not that it affects the story Joe’s told (I guess the “no promotions” section was included to illustrate why the crowd was so thin?), but there is a correction. The announcers for the A’s talked all game about how there was a promotion: this was the first game where the tickets to section 209 were at half-price for a game where Braden starts.
[...] All of this leads to this season, which is rapidly becoming the season of Dallas Braden . * * *. First he publicly challenged Alex Rodriguez , who ran across the mound during a game Braden was pitching. People had different views about …Next Page [...]
Man, I guess jeter didn’t see the way a-rod across the mound .
Does anyone really think he will do that?
I’m the one who thought Braden was right.
But I still think he was a bit of an overreaction(b/c that’s a-rod)
And this is my opinion,That is Girardi’s approach. Derek have to do that
Carter Neal
Thanks for sharing that. Your kids will do OK.
If Dallas Braden was named Oakland’s organizational player of the year, then of COURSE he was a prospect.
I love the blog and I love your writing, but come on!
over the weekend (think it was saturday, but it could have been friday), somebody again asked arod about the mound thing, and his response was something akin to “i don’t want to add to his 15 minutes of fame…”
guess braden took care of that himself
[...] THIS…there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING anyone else can say. [...]
Congratulations to Dallas Braden!
I hope he has a long and successful career, even though I do not look forward to the media rushing to get ARod’s ‘reaction’ every time Braden does something noteworthy.
Of course he called out A-Rod, he wanted attention and there is literally no chance that A-Rod was going to come after him physically. It’s easy to call someone out when there’s nothing they can do but talk about you through the media. You’re usually pretty good Joe, but don’t fall into this cliched bullcrap.
Nice piece, and great job by Braden. The quote from his grandmother is priceless.
Joe, if you like this kind of story, I’d recommend “Jonesy” by John Buccigross and Keith Jones. Essentially Jones (an NHL grinder) chalks most of his success up to not having any other option than success.
Jina,
What are you trying to say?
What is Girardi’s approach? What does Jeter have to do?
So … Braden has about a dozen starts before the All Star game, he could be 8-4, 9-5 and pitching for the AL. Would A-Rod join one of those conferences on the mound with him there?
Drew Brees once said when he was at Purdue that he wanted a perfect game as QB. To him that meant no incompletions.
Strangely, a perfect passer rating in the NFL is 158.3, and it requires only a 77.5% completion percentage.
Not so perfect.
Lefties with good control, but no intimidating stuff and belief…cool, that means Lannan will throw one soon, and everyone will wonder why it wasn’t Strasburg.
That would be “ten-pin” bowling. In REAL bowling (candlepin), a perfect game has never been thrown. That’s why it’s the superior game, and most likely why it’s dying because too few people appreciate how hard it is to be good at it.
“Hitters have done terrible things to misguided change-ups.”
Great quote.
Hmm, Buehrle’s no-hitter was against the Rays too. Think the Yankees or Twins might be thinking about having a crafty lefty available for a start in the playoffs?
And tex @2, well I don’t know about forever, but Len Barker was a pretty forgettable pitcher, but I will always remember his name. Dallas Braden will enjoy similar fame, no matter what else he does.
Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. Fake it til you make it Braden. Glad to see he’s arrived in such style.
Maybe Braden will be a journeyman flail-out in a few years.
But two days previous to Braden’s perfect game, Jamie Moyer became the oldest man to ever throw a shutout.
So what’s the point in judging now?
So, other than the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers, do we think the Rays are the best team ever to get perfect-gamed?
@ 35 – Agree with Brent. I was one year old when Len Barker threw his perfect game, and I have remembered his name since at least the age of seven. Perfection keeps your name alive a long time, at least among the home town fans.
This perfect game should make us remember the most memorable game in baseball history, Don Larson’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Prior to that, there has been three perfect games in the 20th century and the previous one was 34 years earlier. I started following baseball in 1938 and I assumed there would never be another perfect game. Then Larson did it in the series. I think his reward was that he had to carry Yogi Berra to the dugout!
2 comments :
- Randy Johnson was not “getting by on guile” in 2004 when he threw his perfecto. I watched that game and even have it on tape somewhere. He could still hit 98 on the gun and went 16-14 with a 2.60 ERA and 290 Ks in 245 IP. He should have won the Cy Young that year but got buried on a bad 111 loss DBacks team and spent much of his season throwing to Juan Brito who had been released by the Royals the previous off-season. However, Robbie Hammock caught JOhnson’s perfect game which leads to my next comment. . . .
- why do perfect games seem to be caught by lesser catchers? The pitchers are mostly a collection of good to great pitchers including 3 HOFers, 1 future HOFer and a bunch of other All-Stars. Meanwhile, yes Posada and Pudge 2.0 both caught perfect games (& Yogi if you count the post-season), but it’s a lot of Ron Hassey (twice!!) & Jeff Torborg (Koufax) & Joe Girardi (Cone) & Jim Pagliaroni (Catfish) & Robbie Hammock (Johnson) & now Landon Powell.
Odd.
[...] Joe Posnanski Erik Hahmann Jack Moore Tagged with: perfect game [...]
@#10 Carter Neal: Please accept my sympathies for the loss of your wife. Thank you for sharing your deeply personal story.
@38 – And not only perfect-gamed but perfect-gamed in consecutive seasons, a first in baseball history.
What’s up with all the perfect games lately? Five perfect games since 1998. More perfectos in the last 30 years than in the 100 years prior. Why?
“a Member’s Only fastball — mid-80s”
That’s cool. Never saw that before.
I’m going to nominate that a mid-90s fastball be called a grunge fastball.
Mike @44. Has to be the increase in the K rate by batters. If batters strike out, they aren’t hitting the ball, which leads to fewer outs that the defense has to make.
If you look at the list of no-hitters, the amount of these has probably stayed the same since the dead ball era, but perfect games have increased. The only thing that makes sense is that the K rate has increased.
@#10 Carter Neal: Thanks for that. I also lost my mother when I was young. My dad was great, and it seems like you are too – trust me, it matters and it helps.
And defense, in general, has improved in modern times. How many of the no-hitters of the dead ball era weren’t perfect games because of errors?
For instance, the first game I looked up to see why it wasn’t a perfect game, was Walter Johnson’s no-hitter of July 1, 1920. It was first because I couldn’t find box-scores for pre-1920 games on baseball-reference.com. Guess what? The Big Train faced 28 batters, 27 were out and the 28th reached base by error.
@23, Organizational Player of the Year and ‘prospect’ are far from synonymous. The woods are full of AAA veterans who had a great year and got the nod — typically it’s based entirely on stats, and it’s not uncommon for someone to have a great minor-league year & still be thought of as “too old for his level” or just, in the case of P’s, able to ‘trick’ lower-level hitters but not make it in the bigs.
It’s interesting, however, that while K rate has gone way up hits per game and OBP have been relatively constant (that’s based on comparing the last 30 years to the previous 70, which is as far back as baseball reference goes with K rate).
According to the wiki page on perfect games there have been eight would-be perfect games spoiled by an error, three of them since 1980. If all eight had been perfect games it really wouldn’t change the overall trend that much.
Also thought it might just be more games in the expansion era leading to more perfect games. Not really. Since Barker in 1981 there’s been a perfect game roughly once in every 13,ooo games. Prior to Barker it was closer to once every 30,000 games.
Incredible perspective, Joe. Hard not to tear up watching Braden hug his grandmother after the game.
But how about Longoria flirting with an unwritten rule in attempting a bunt in the 5th?? I was more peeved when I first heard about it, but Evan seems like the type to play the game the right way. I’m just glad it never became an issue.
Congrats, Dallas.
[...] who ran across the mound during a game Braden was pitching. People had different views about …Page 2 dallas braden | Comment [...]
@27 Jim, sorry but you are simply mistaken if you think the deal with arod was because braden wanted attention or was somehow thinking it was because he knew he couldn’t come after him.
(Of course everyone knows arod isn’t going after anyone; he is perhaps the best baseball playing pu**y EVER – he is too busy wanting everyone to adore him.)
I wondered about the mound crossing incident but simple reading of his life story made it clear that he was not posturing even a little bit. THAT is who he is, like it or not.
If you insist on using the word “of course” in describing the incident, you should really apply it to arod. Of course he was doing something snotty to try and find any edge he can find – it is who HE is, after all.
Jeff, bunting is not really against any rule – written or not. Trying to get on base so you can win a game is the only rule that matters and when a pitcher is going that good, you take whatever is available. Even the tiny brains online who answer espn sportsnation questions said that it was not wrong by a vote of 80-90%.
[...] Dallas Braden, Unlikely Perfection by Joe Posnanski [...]
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[...] who ran across the mound during a game Braden was pitching. People had different views about …Next Page Comments [...]
Regarding Mathewson’s fadeway, in “You Know Me Al”, Ring Lardner describes the pitch thusly:
“…It is a ball that is throwed out between 2 fingers…”
suggesting that it was, in fact, a circle change, just like Bradens.
Hey, if it’s good enough for Christy Mathewson…
Dallas is an amazing guy who does great things for his community and loves the game of baseball. This could not have happened to a nicer, more deserving guy. Congrats Dallas!
Shutouts in soccer are very common Joe, there are several every week in every league around the world.
Damn double negatives threw me!
@the cardinal dude:
How was he not just after attention? It happened, he could have walked over to A-Rod after the whole thing and talked to him about it, but what did he do? He went to the dugout ,threw a big old fit, and then cried to the media about it saying you don’t handle things with words in “the 209.” But all he was doing was talking!
Alex Rodriguez can’t be hard to find, if Braden wanted to show it wasn’t all posturing he could have handled it, but he didn’t. So tell me again how this wasn’t all just to get attention and ONLY because he knew Rodriguez wasn’t going to do anything to retaliate?
[...] I was much more interested in, however was the angle that Joe Posnanski took. He wrote about how Braden was never a prospect and how part of that is because he didn’t [...]
@the jimdude
I already answered that question – perhaps you should read it and then read braden’s life story. You may not like his in your face approach to his business, but it is clear it is part of who he is. Just like being a pu**y is part of Arod’s. No one with a single gray cell remaining in working order would be worried about him coming after them.
The BEST B’day gift the A’s could give me.. Let’s Go A’s
I did read it and it doesn’t make sense. His “in your face approach?” You mean, when he didn’t say anything to A-Rod personally and instead threw a fit in the dugout and then whined to the media? Yeah, he really got in A-Rod’s face there. Watch out for that 209!
“What’s up with all the perfect games lately? Five perfect games since 1998. More perfectos in the last 30 years than in the 100 years prior. Why?” — Mikey #44
Simple answer: statistically normal deviation. The same reason, for instance, that if you flip a coin enough times, at some point you will get 10 heads (or 10 tails) in a row. The fact that the odds of heads appearing is 50% does NOT mean that every other toss results in heads.
“Statistically normal deviation” also explains almost all of those “how come XXX happens so often/so little nowadays?” questions people always have. To name a relevant baseball example, slumps and streaks fall into this category. For instance, Mark Teixeira is a career .287 hitter but hit .136 this April — which only means that some month (this one?) he will hit roughly .438 to balance out April.
The fact that the Rays have been on the short end of a perfect game in consecutive years also fits in this category. Is there anyone who truly believes that this indicates the Rays will do this every year from now on?
@ Jim
You mean besides shouting at A-Rod to “Stay the f*** off my mound!” when he was on first base?
And he was how far away again?
[...] By the way, he’s a great article about the overlooked Braden by Joe Posnanski: http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/05/09/perfection/ [...]
[...] While the majority of material discussed Braden’s resiliency off the field, Sports Illustrated’s Posnanski broke away from the popular storyline and instead wrote about Braden’s resiliency on it. [...]