Dallas Braden threw the 19th perfect game in Major League Baseball history yesterday for the Oakland A's over the Tampa Bay Rays:
Oakland’s Braden is perfect against Rays
His mother passed away when he was a senior in high school, but his grandmother was at the game:
Braden’s Mother’s Day gift is perfect
Best quote: Braden's grandmother said "stick it, A-Rod".
It was Braden's first complete game in the majors, and only the second time he'd pitched into the 8th inning.
It was just the third road loss of the season for the Rays.
It was the first time a team with the best record in baseball has been on the losing end of a perfect game. Unsurprisingly, they had the highest winning percentage (.733) of any "perfecto-ed" team.
It was just 290 days since the last perfect game. The briefest period in the modern era. The last one was July 23, 2009 when Mark Buehrle of the White Sox beat the same Tampa Bay Rays.
(The Rays are not the first team to be on the losing end of successive perfect games. The Dodgers were on the short ends of numbers 12 and 13.)
Rays manager Joe Maddon has been on the losing end of 3 perfect games. He was the bullpen coach for the Angels when Kenny Rodgers threw his.
I almost bought Diana tickets to the game for her birthday. D'oh.
A lot has been made of the small crowd: just 12,228 people. Still, that was almost twice the 6,298 people who saw the last A's perfect game thrown by Catfish Hunter in 1968. All told, yesterday's game outdrew 5 other perfectos.
Hunter's happened in just the A's 25th game since moving to Oakland.
The Philadelphia A's were on the losing end of Cy Young's perfect game in 1904. Surprisingly, 7 teams have both won and lost perfect games.
It was the 14th perfect game for an American League pitcher. While National League pitchers have thrown only 5, National League teams have been on the losing end of 7. The Brooklyn Dodgers lost Don Larsen's in the 1956 World Series, and the Montreal Expos lost David Cone's in an interleague match-up in 1999, on
Even if Dallas Braden had lost the game, his grandma's quote would still have been the quote of the day.
ReplyDeleteI just read a fascinating book you may be interested in, "As They See 'Em: A fan's Travels In the World of Umpires" by Bruce Weber. He trained as an umpire and interviewed dozen of major & minor league umpires for the book, including (among others) a lengthy discussion with the home plate umpire for the Expos-Yankees perfect game. I found it a very interesting perspective on the game. I have newfound respect for some of these men.
Nice! I'll have to check it out. I wanted to be an umpire, once upon a time.
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