Guest Post: King of Perfection

One of the stories I never quite got around to writing about in 2012 was the perfect game thrown by Felix Hernandez of the Mariners. Today's guest poster has been nice enough to correct that oversight:

Even With Perfection, Felix Hernandez Was Overlooked

     Despite another lost season for the Seattle Mariners, in August of 2012 the team experienced their ace reach true perfection. Felix Hernandez threw the 23rd perfect game in baseball history last year, and the 2nd of 2012 when he faced the Tampa Bay Rays.
     From the very beginning, Hernandez was looking even better than the Cy Young Award winner has in the past. He began the game by inducing a ton of weakly hit ground balls and fly outs. Striking out two the first time through the order was impressive, but it was not until the sixth inning that things got interesting.
     In the top of the sixth, Hernandez began to turn it up a notch, and the crowd took notice. He struck out the 7-8-9 hitters for the Rays to complete the second time through the order. When he came out for the seventh, he got outfielder Sam Fuld to roll over a ball, but then BJ Upton came up for the most controversial part of the perfect game.
      Upton grounded out to Sean Rodriguez at third base, but Rays manager Joel Madden would come out and actually be ejected for arguing the call. After a delay, some wondered if Hernandez would cool down. He responded by striking out five of the last six batters he faced, putting his stamp on baseball history.
     With so many perfect games and no hitters thrown in recent memory, Hernandez never really received the attention he deserved, even in fantasy baseball circles. In fact, that has sort of been his problem his entire career. Even during his Cy Young award season, many looked at his 13-12 record as though it was his fault.
      Ironically, the Mariners only offered him one run of support during that August game. He was one swing away from getting a no-decision in that game for the ages. Even by Hernandez’s standards, he was simply dominant in every way manageable in that game.

A Long Season

It is a long season.

You have probably heard that more times than you can count, if you are a baseball fan. It is, mathematically, the longest season of any professional sport. 162 games in 6 months, each lasting 3-4 hours, give or take an hour here and there. That's the most time spent on the field of any sport. So, we hear, quite often, about the long season.

The length of the season, just by adding up days, doesn't really approach the problem of the Long Season, though. Those 162 games are played six or seven days in a row, on a regular basis. The limit on the number of consecutive games played? Let me give you the official wording:

(12) No Club shall be scheduled, or rescheduled if practicable, to
play more than 20 consecutive dates without an open day. A rainedout
game may be rescheduled to an open date in the same series, or
to an open date at the end of the same series, if (a) the open date is
a road off-day for the visiting Club, and (b) the rescheduling does
not result in the home team playing more than 24 consecutive dates
without an open day.

Yes, twenty day in a row are possible in the regular conduct of business in the MLB. Have you ever worked twenty days in a row at your job? Even if your job isn't the most demanding in the world, how would you think of your job at the end of a twenty day stretch. I would call it a grind. I might include a few curse words before the word 'grind', but 'grind' would be my general feeling.

Baseball is a long grind.

On The Flip Side

In baseball, sometimes the uniform becomes part of the player. It isn't something that announces itself. Often, it is the sort of thing that comes to light at the end of a long career. The first one that springs to mind is Babe Ruth.

In your mind, there he is, in pinstripes, with the overlapping NY on his chest. I can't imagine any more lasting image of the Babe. It's like he was a Yankee through and through. Born at home plate in New York. After all, Yankee Stadium was The House That Ruth Built. Of course, that picture is not really reflective of Ruth's career at all.

Six years in Boston at the beginning of his career, a dominant lefthander on the mound. Funny, but we rarely picture him that way. Maybe it makes sense, because Ruth rewrote the rules of hitting in those pinstripes. Odd, though, that the Red Sox spent almost a century breaking a 'curse' of a man rarely pictured in their uniform.

This is from flipflopflyball.com, which you, being a baseball fan, should have visited many times already.

The players of the past, through the late 1960's, became one with their uniforms by virtue of the way baseball conducted its business. The reserve clause dictated that players could be retained indefinitely by one team, and cheaply too! Great players were destined for long careers in one colour.
Musial in Cardinal Red, Koufax in Dodger Blue.  It is natural to us now, but maybe it would have been different in an era where changing teams came naturally when the highest bidder came calling. When baseball moved through the 1970, 80s and 90s, into collective bargaining and free agency, the thought of a player in one uniform and only one uniform became much, much rarer. Many players now seem to change teams like it's a contest to collect the most different shirts. Matt Stairs, Eric Hinske, Jim Thome, Octavio Dotel, I have no lasting impression of any logo or number on their backs.