My Favorite Sports Moment Of The Year: Mark Buehrle’s Perfect Game
There are countless pitchers with more talent, those that throw the ball harder, those with more wins, more awards than Mark Buehrle.
But there are are now only six pitchers in the history of the game we call baseball that have thrown a no-hitter and a perfect game, an accolade Buehrle achieved on lazy afternoon on July 23. He’d already thrown his no-hitter back in 2007; the perfect game was his cherry on top.
But it wasn’t so much that Buehrle went 27 up and 27 down with no walks or anyone reaching base on an error, becoming only the 18th pitcher in major-league history to toss a perfect game. It was that ridiculous ninth inning, when Ozzie Guillen was provoked to insert DeWayne Wise into center field as a defensive replacement and move Scott Podsednik over to left. It turned out to be one of the smartest moves — if not the smartest move — Guillen would make that season.
Wise’s beat on Gabe Kapler’s hit to left center was immaculate; one false move and that’s a homer, one false move and he drops that ball, and Buehrle’s perfect game becomes a one-hitter, maybe worse. Wise won’t be remembered for much during his tenure on the South Side, but he’ll be forever remembered and linked to that moment, and he deserves it.
A baseball season can drag; it can seem like it’s never going to end. But it’s for rare moments like these, moments that don’t happen in any other sport, that makes baseball worth watching, that make baseball unique. When else to we drop everything we’re doing to tune in, or follow a gamecast, or follow along on the live stream mlb.com was so gracious to provide those last couple innings on an otherwise meaningless game in the second half of a season?
Nowhere else. Only in baseball, really. (Well, there are some exceptions. But you get my point.)
Here’s the catch for you one more time. Cheers, Mr Buehrle.
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